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.

Comments

I trust him.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a Sontaran. He can deliver on a simple hop to the moon. Just... don't put him in charge of our military.

Re:I trust him.

[Austerity Empowers]

I hope he delivers himself to the moon.

Re:I trust him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's settle for creimer instead, OK?

Re:I trust him.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hehehe... good idea!

Creimy-Dumpty goes to the moon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re: I trust him.

[Type44Q]

And you don't feel the slightest bit lame for talking to yourself??

Re: I trust him.

[KingBenny]

its what happens to people in isolation, very hard to get rid of ... so, no, i don't ... but you weren't talking to me, right ? maybe i hurrr voices too 0_o :p

I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of issues with a Mars attempt.

Even better might be to concentrate on a serious orbital space station.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

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.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon should be the new Australia. Make it a penal colony so we have a reason to send all the niiggers, towelheads, kikes, chinks, wetbacks, and all other types of darkies, to the moon. Declare the moon off limits and let society advance rapidly on Earth without the evil behavior of the darkies to hold us back.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent, if you love sulphur and 800 F temps.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Opportunist]

Mostly because it's way, way harder to do than Mars. Personally, I'd guess it's pretty much impossible with current technology to do a manned mission to Venus.

And I'm not even talking about the atmosphere yet. The dV budget required to get to a stable low orbit around Venus is already higher than for Mars, and as soon as you wish to land you are really in trouble. Ok, you can aerobreak on Venus, that's nice for going down, but the question is how you get up again. You need about 10k dV to get from the surface of Earth to LEO. From the surface of Venus to LVO you'd need approximately 27k dV. Nearly THRICE that.

You remember the kind of rocket we used to launch humans into space for a trip to a piece of rock that's practically rolling around in our back yard?

You have to build a rocket more than three times that size on the surface of Venus. Provided you're fine with going to Phobos or Deimos. It might need to be a wee bit bigger to bring along the fuel for the trip to Earth.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just ship them to the existing Australia? It's a lot cheaper, and given that all Australian flora/fauna is poisonous/venomous... well, we'll get a sick satisfaction from it.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Actually check the link that you replying to. Nobody is talking about habitation on the surface.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon should be the new Australia. Make it a penal colony

Yeah, then they could get rid of their guns too and again show the US how it's done. And Australia was founded by criminals.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Mostly because it's way, way harder to do than Mars. Personally, I'd guess it's pretty much impossible with current technology to do a manned mission to Venus.

The above link argues otherwise, in excruciating detail.

And I'm not even talking about the atmosphere yet. The dV budget required to get to a stable low orbit around Venus is already higher than for Mars

Not with aerocapture; it's actually slightly less. Venus also allows for much faster transfers, especially on return.

and as soon as you wish to land you are really in trouble

The requirement for an additional ascent stage is really Venus's one significant downside, but offset by numerous upsides relative to other destinations. And the very reason for that difficulty is itself a good thing: it's because Venus is so earthlike, and has the sort of gravity our bodies are adapted to.

Note also that I wouldn't use the word "land". Again, another one of the advantages of Venus is that you don't actually have to "land". There are no obstacles to avoid and your timing is much less critical; your deployment ellipse can be massive.

From the surface of Venus

Nobody is talking about the surface of Venus. And even if we were, you wouldn't be using rockets plowing through the dense lower atmosphere; Venus sample return mission designs use balloons to get out of the dense lower layers.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Opportunist]

If you don't land on the planet, you have to ensure that you can remain in orbit. I think I needn't point out how it ends if you don't.

About using balloons: If that was a feasible way to get payloads into an orbit (because that's what you have to do if you want to return whatever went down to the surface), don't you think that we might be already doing something like this here on earth? One of the key problems of spaceflight is that rocket engines behave vastly differently at sea level than they do in near vacuum and that we waste nearly all the fuel just to get out of the denser parts of our atmosphere, so if this could work in any way we'd probably already be doing it.

Sorry, I'm not sold. I've read it and they make some interesting claims, but so far it fails to convince.

Re:I agree - moon first

[stealth_finger]

Excellent, if you love sulphur and 800 F temps.

Cloud city mother fucker

Re:I agree - moon first

[NicknameUnavailable]

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.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

All the planets are made of the same stuff. The moon is much closer and cheaper to visit. The moon has a lower gravity well than Mars - easier to land on - much less delta-v required. After the earth, the moon is the second best second best planet.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are in orbit - it doesn't matter where you are in orbit - it is the same everywhere. Earth orbit is the same as Venus orbit for all useful purposes, but Earth orbit is much cheaper to operate in.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

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.

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.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

If you don't land on the planet, you have to ensure that you can remain in orbit.

Incorrect again. Is it really that hard for you to read even the introduction in the above link? Venus habitation is about settlement in the middle cloud layer, not orbit.

About using balloons: If that was a feasible way to get payloads into an orbit

Or for that matter, to even read the very post you're replying to? "Venus sample return mission designs use balloons to get out of the dense lower layers." Not to orbit - only out of the lower layers. A very small balloon provides a very large amount of lift in Venus's lower atmosphere. The vast majority of that "27 km/s" dV is about plowing through the lower atmosphere, which is sort of like trying to blast through water.

And to reiterate, all of this is irrelevant for a habitat lofted in the middle cloud layer.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent, if you love sulphur and 800 F temps.

Cloud city mother fucker

Gravity will win. Dumbass.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Whenever I read that, in my mind it's being said by Samuel L. Jackson in some sort of sci-fi blockbuster ;)

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon should be the new Australia. Make it a penal colony

Yeah, then they could get rid of their guns too and again show the US how it's done. And Australia was founded by criminals.

Wait til I get going! Now where was I?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Opportunist]

How do you get to that middle cloud layer? You're coming from an orbit. Then have to slow down to "hover" there. In between you not only have to get rid of quite a few km/s of speed while inflating something that lets you hover. Now, normal air (N/O, as found here at home) would of course be floating on the mostly CO2 atmosphere of Venus, but we're a far cry from simply filling a multi-ton heavy space craft with air to make it float. If anything, you'd need something akin to a helium balloon as used here, filled with air.

Helium balloons, on the other hand, can't quite handle the stress of entering an atmosphere at multiple km/s.

In other words, you either have to solve how to take the balloons you launch from the surface to the cloud layers to orbit, or you have to solve the problem how to get something from orbit to the cloud layers. Pick your poison.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Chris Mattern]

Venus has the slight problem that anything you want to send there would melt. Mars is a lot easier.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Chris Mattern]

We can't even do midair habitats on Earth and he wants to build them 260 million kilometers away? Yeah, that's gonna work really well.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Now you've got me thinking about "The Empire Strikes Back" with Samuel L. Jackson as Lando Calrissian.

Re: I agree - moon first

[dougdonovan]

pence wants to run the moon. the planet earth, trump has that. good luck to both of them.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Have we tried?

Re:I agree - moon first

[NicknameUnavailable]

There's a sweet spot you have to balance on on Venus - too low and you crash, too high and you burn up. This is due to material constraints - you're pretty much limited to teflon and other plastics as coatings due to the sulfuric acid atmosphere. Metals would corrode. If you go to high the plastics melt (or at least will become soft allowing any stresses in the hull to crack them open. If components of the structure bump into eachother good luck with that because a scratch on the coating will likewise cause corrosion of the inner materials in a matter of days. The plastics themselves will have a lifetime of about 20-30 years at best in those conditions even if nothing goes wrong, so you will have to constant be recoating everything to keep it stable, and as far as I am aware there are no hydrocarbons on venus to make more. All this equates to: if the colony fails for whatever reason there will certainly be political issues lasting upwards of a half-decade preventing another attempt, then you're shit is corroded and destroyed leaving you to start fresh when/if it gets restarted. On Mars it could all go to Hell, politicians could bicker about whether or not to allow it to happen again for another several decades, and if they finally restart it most of the equipment will need at most the dust wiped off and some welding to function again. Every colonization attempt in Human history has had some massive collapse associated with it, it's not a matter of if it happens but when for something as complex as colonizing another planet, therefore that must be built into the plan. Venus is not within our current technological capabilities (Hell, for that matter Mars isn't either given we still crack water for O2 and the plan on Mars is to crack Iron Oxide for O2, but at least that provides building materials as a byproduct and there's a viable pathway to it.) Venus is a much more difficult place than Mars.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

How do you get to that middle cloud layer?

You could just read the document. There's many ways to enter from orbit, including the traditional (aeroshells), but also some more advanced concepts in advanced states of research such as ballutes and inflatable lifting bodies. These offer gentler deceleration at a lower mass penalty. The VAMP mission proposal for Venus, for example, is a lifting body example - the same inflated wing that functions as an entry lifting body / radiator also keeps it aloft in the atmosphere.

Then have to slow down to "hover" there

There is no need to "hover". The speed simply has to be reduced to a rate that you can inflate while falling as much as a few dozen kilometers.

Ballutes are particularly interesting in this regard as you can fill ballonets (or equivalent inter-lift-cell space) with ram air. You only need the (comparably very small) amount of stored gas to be released during freefall. Hypersonic ballutes are a mature technology, and have even been used as drag devices for manned spacecraft. Once inflated with ram air, the habitat presents a huge cross section and thus very slow descent rate.

The HAVOC proposal (which has studied the freefall inflation case in detail) used stored helium as its lifting gas (although their tankage mass estimates are very optimistic; HAVOC had a much more challenging design, in that it carries all of its ascent stage mass during atmospheric entry and made no use of ram air). More interesting than helium would be the decomposition of liquids (such as ammonia and hydrogen peroxide) and solids (such as ammonium salts), which store with low tankage masses and yield gases more desirable for a habitat (the hydrogen fraction is in particular valuable, whether (temporarily) as hydrogen gas, or as (more desirable) water). In the case of ammonia, it doesn't even need to be decomposed immediately; simply allowing it to vaporize on its own inside an envelope can provide significant lift (but decomposition doubles the number of moles of gas).

It's important to reiterate that, unlike HAVOC, the initial habitat mass is a tiny fraction of its ultimate mass. As any sustainable habitat requires ISRU, it's arriving with none of the things that ultimately make it heavy (propellant, water, and of course there's no ascent stage docked until people arrive). Hence, the initial inflation requires only a tiny percentage of the final inflation.

The mass figures for supplying the initial lofting gases are included in the linked document.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

We can't even do midair habitats on Earth

We absolutely can; we've been making airships since 1852. If you're asking why nobody's made a farm in one and lived in one, where's the economic case for that?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

"Equal footing" with Mars would imply exactly that.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Kjella]

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.

Re:I agree - moon first

[drinkypoo]

Some people think that Venus is more terraformable than Mars because there's more stuff there. You can theoretically deal with insolation problems in either direction with a soletta.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

" It really is an excellent, and far too neglected, destination."

Space Nutter-like typing detected.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

no, because it is sooooooo damn expensive. because Helium and Hydrogen are VERY small molecules and pass right through shit so need constant replenishment, because energy costs money, because UV radiation deteriorates plastics, and higher altitudes mean more UV exposure, and for a host of other reasons.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

There's a sweet spot you have to balance on on Venus - too low and you crash, too high and you burn up

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Venus gets colder as you increase in altitude (there's not even a thermosphere), not hotter. The actual constraints for manned missions are the pressure to temperature ratio (which is more optimal closer to the poles). There's several kilometers acceptable variation for the long term, with allowable deeper excursions in the short term. The optimal altitude also changes day/night, but so does lift.

This is due to material constraints - you're pretty much limited to teflon and other plastics as coatings due to the sulfuric acid atmosphere. Metals would corrode.

I'm not sure what blimps you've seen with metal envelopes...

BTW, you wouldn't use teflon, although it was used in the Vega balloons. The gas permeability is too high, the tensile strength too low, and workability too poor. We have much better fluoropolymers nowadays. Some are even used on blimps on Earth, such as tedlar used in the Zeppelin NT (the new Goodyear Blimp series). Also, you wouldn't use a single material; you'd use a laminate. Fluoropolymers have superb chemical resistance, UV resistance and anti-fouling properties, but they're also heavy, contain fluorine (limited in ISRU), have poorer tensile strength, and there are better permeability solutions in many regards. Fluoropolymers make superb surface layers / coatings, atop biaxially-oriented non-fluoropolymer substrates.

If you go to high the plastics melt (or at least will become soft allowing any stresses in the hull to crack them open

Actually, the polymers in question tend to have quite high melting points. The ideal from a melting point perspective would be liquid crystal polymers (PBO / PIBO can actually operate at or near the surface), but they're opaque. But fluoropolymers and most good barrier/tensile layers have excellent thermal stability. We're not talking polypropylene here.

If components of the structure bump into eachother good luck with that because a scratch on the coating will likewise cause corrosion of the inner materials in a matter of days

First of, you overestimate Venus's atmosphere; it's more like a dense smog (or more accuragely, vog) than an acid bath. The sulfuric acid concentrations are a couple to a couple dozen milligrams per cubic meter. By contrast, OSHA allows workers to breathe up to 1mg per cubic meter for an entire 8-hour shift. Now, the sulfuric acid concentration on Venus is higher than sulfuric acid mists on Earth, but still, it puts it into perspective. You also grossly overestimate how quickly a leak cycles air in and out of an airship.

One of the most notable characteristics of most fluoropolymers is specifically that they are very resistant to scratching and have low coefficients of friction. Beyond this, damage (ranging from pinholes to large gashes) can be repaired, by a number of means discussed in the document. Some of them, such as Lockheed's "SPIDER" system, are even automatic.

The plastics themselves will have a lifetime of about 20-30 years at best in those conditions even if nothing goes wrong, so you will have to constant be recoating everything to keep it stable

Everything has a lifespan. For every colony on every planet. ISRU is essential for a colony to be permanent.

and as far as I am aware there are no hydrocarbons on venus to make more

Literally half of the linked document is on ISRU, you might want to check that out.

On Mars it could all go to Hell, politicians could bicker about whether or not to allow it to happen again for another several decades, and if they finally restart it most of the equipment will need at most the dust wiped off and some welding to function again

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Nobody is talking about the surface of Venus. If you're not going to read the linked document, you could at least read the above comments.

Venus's middle cloud layer is the most Earthlike place in the solar system outside of Earth. Earthlike pressures, temperatures, gravity, sunlight, sufficient radiation shielding, etc.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

let's just think for a minute, I know that is a concept foreign to you....

delta t.

Meaning, how much energy do you need to cool from 800 degrees Fahrenheit, versus how much energy do you need to heat from 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Well, if you want to get to 70 degrees, a temp most humans find comfortable that means either enough energy to heat 270 degrees or enough energy to cool 730 degrees. Well, if all else is equal (it isn't!) it would take roughly 1/3rd the energy to heat than to cool, because the change in temperature, the 'delta t' is one third in that case than in the other.

Now, let's talk about atmosphere. In one case we have almost no atmosphere to speak of, and we have deadly radiation. In the other case we have a fucking shit atmosphere that is trying to kill and destroy everything, and fucking metric ton of radiation... which sounds easier to build and protect humans in?

Probably not the one wherein I used foul language describing it.

Think. Don't just knee-jerk argue with everyone. Pretend like you are a sentient creature, not a person with the IQ of the average doorstop.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

ED: That should read "there's not even a large thermosphere temperature spike" like there is on Earth. You can see the temperature profiles here (I can dig up some graphics for higher up if you'd like)

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can tell, the longest duration flight in an airship is either 71 hours (Guinness Book of World Records), or 11 days according to Wikipedia (I don't know why that one is not counted by Guinness, maybe because it was military). I think before you start talking about airships as potential habitats, you need something a bit longer than that; as things stand, there's no more reason to consider an airship as a potential habitat than any other kind of aircraft. I'm not even going to list all the obvious problems that would need to be addressed to make an airship somewhere you could live for more than a few days.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Meaning, how much energy do you need to cool from 800 degrees Fahrenheit, versus how much energy do you need to heat from 200 degrees below zero Fahrenheit

How can you have continually missed this?

We are not talking about the surface.

We are talking about the Earthlike middle cloud layer. Care to try your post again?

(And to top it off, you're wrong about cooling energy, too. Google "coefficient of performance" for starters. You're also wrong about radiation; Venus's atmosphere is quite effective at radiation shielding, unlike Mars' atmosphere)

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

I think before you start talking about airships as potential habitats, you need something a bit longer than that

Wikipedia gives a reference for the latter - "Kite balloons to airships: the Navy's lighter-than-air experience", ed. Roy A. Grossnick, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington D.C., 1987". The former record was 1928 and the latter 1958, so both are ages ago. But all this is irrelevant; in both cases, they're not limited by the airship, but by supplies (in particular, fuel). The whole point of a colony, versus a base, is that you produce your own supplies. Nobody has done this on Earth because there's zero economic case for doing so.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

and cloud city, deals with 800 degrees and sulphuric acid atmosphere how????

you're a dumb fuck.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

I love people who think PLANET == LANDING && PEOPLE. They're hilarious.

1) Gravity. Perhaps you've heard of it? It's that force which makes it nearly impossible to get back up off a Mars size planet, or even out of Low Planetary Orbit (LPO). Just send a christmas tree covered with short-life probes into LPO and drop one when you find something REALLY interesting. It won't come back but who cares. We will get all the data and, on failure, DARPA/NASA will finally get the chance to see how effective the Rods From God system would be. Win - win!

2) Fuel. All of the fuel must come from Earth. That's the fuel to get back off the planet and out of LPO. That's a lot of fuel, no matter which type of propulsion you use. Easier by far to save the weight and the costs and send a one-way, low-cost package to whichever planet you choose

3) Accidents. N. 1. A Certainty. See: Murphy's Law.
I'd hate to send a bunch of pulpy meat-bags out into space just to have the space program cut short and permanently de-funded because we had to have "boots on the planet". That is just stupid. We have better robots now than we did in the Apollo era. Most likely all the Astronauts would do is drop off a lot of rovers and collect rocks.
Yay. Mars Rocks. Woo-hoo!
Too much cost and risk and not enough payback.

In the end it is far, far better for us to stay on-planet until we figure out this whole pesky energy/food/weather/population/housing/health/... thing along with that niggling "how to keep meat-bags alive in deep space" problem then to have boot-prints in red dust.

Hey, if you want, we can send a pair of robotic boots to Mars. How 'bout that?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Long term Venus has an even bigger "But why?" problem than Mars.

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.

Since you're on the surface you have the potential to start making fields of solar arrays, greenhouses, excavate underground structures, mining and refining

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.

Venus will essentially be an orbiting spaceship

**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.

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,

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).

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,

Speaking of that, Venus has more frequent launch windows.

Re:I agree - moon first

[avandesande]

I like Mercury better, there is water in the polar craters and with the solar energy differentials between light and dark tons of power

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

**facepalm again**

Let's start from the very beginning: do you understand that both temperature and pressure decline with altitude?

(Let's also take the chance to correct a common misconception: there's no sulfuric acid on the surface of Venus; it's not stable in those conditions. At the surface, it's sulfur dioxide. There is sulfuric acid in the middle cloud layer, but more like a vog than an "acid bath" - it's so sparse that visibility is several kilometers)

Re:I agree - moon first

[spire3661]

Colony Collapse shouldnt be considered a failure. One of the biggest issues humans have with designing things is they think they can design one perfect thing, instead of taking nature's 'expendable' approach. You need to have more than one colony design, and some will fail. Nature progresses by ensuring the losses dont outpace the gains That is how we have to design off-world colonies. We absolutely have to get over the idea that no one is going to die in these efforts.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

I went out with a girl from Venus once. I'm not so sure I'd like to actually go there now - not if there are more like here there.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck is the point of living in a balloon over another planet? If you want to live in a windowless enclosed space with no access to natural resources you can just remain in your mom's basement. It's a nifty sci-fi idea, but it's completely pointless from a practical standpoint.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

What the fuck is the point of living in a balloon over another planet?

Accessing its resources, adding redundancy to the human species, making use of its orbital dynamics, etc, etc. Numerous subcategories on each.

If you want to live in a windowless enclosed space

Wrong on both accounts: transparent, not windowless, and extremely massive open space.

with no access to natural resources

With resources literally pouring right through your propulsion system.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Wait a minute... are you the same AC who wrote:

"and cloud city, deals with 800 degrees and sulphuric acid atmosphere how????

I'm thinking you don't realize that both pressure and temperature decline with altitude. So, here you go. Does that help clear things up?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

I probably need to add: those temperature isolines are in kelvins (you seem to be working in Fahrenheit).

273,15K = 0C = 32F.
+10K = +10C = +18F.

Re:I agree - moon first

[NicknameUnavailable]

I agree, but I think you might have misread the comment a bit. We need to plan around being able to recover materials after a collapse because even with savings like what SpaceX is aiming for it is going to be very expensive to ship equipment. If the people are lost the equipment should still be usable for the next group to salvage - things like CNCs, foundries, lathes, 3D printers, and ideally even the greenhouses. You don't get that reusability if things are meant to float in the atmosphere and come crashing down, but you do if they're already on the ground, barring events like a direct hit by an asteroid.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we just get people like GPP to agree to play KSP to a reasonable degree of proficiency before commenting on topics like this? Preferably without watching any Scott Manley videos...

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

He's never LEFT his mom's basement, give him a break.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I see the words "Space Nutter" on stackoverflow I get a realllly unpleasant mental image of creimer and xxxJonBoyxxx

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

What would happen if a catalyst was introduced to the Venus atmosphere that would neutralize its acidic nature?

Re:I agree - moon first

[110010001000]

Space nutter detected. The idea of a floating cloud city on Venus is preposterous. You space nutters always are fixated on the details (using ammonia vs water vs hydrogen), and ignore the big problems. How are you going to get people to Venus? What about radiation, food, water, etc. I'm sure you will have an answer for those too ("just shield the craft using asteroid dust"). Christ.

Re:I agree - moon first

[penandpaper]

I dream of floating Venetian electric sheep.

Re:I agree - moon first

[fox171171]

About using balloons: If that was a feasible way to get payloads into an orbit (because that's what you have to do if you want to return whatever went down to the surface), don't you think that we might be already doing something like this here on earth? One of the key problems of spaceflight is that rocket engines behave vastly differently at sea level than they do in near vacuum and that we waste nearly all the fuel just to get out of the denser parts of our atmosphere, so if this could work in any way we'd probably already be doing it.

Sorry, I'm not sold. I've read it and they make some interesting claims, but so far it fails to convince.

The atmosphere on Venus is significantly more dense than on Earth.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

When ever I see "space nutter" in response to a well reasoned and scientifically backed comment, I can't help but read it in the Cletus voice.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

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.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Ed: deuterium concentration. I shuold relly strat porfraednig.

Re:I agree - moon first

[PoopJuggler]

I guess you've never heard of "buoyancy".

Re:I agree - moon first

[Green Mountain Bot]

What the fuck is the point of living in a balloon over another planet?

Accessing its resources, adding redundancy to the human species, making use of its orbital dynamics, etc, etc. Numerous subcategories on each.

It would be easier to access resources on Mars, and it would be much easier to establish a human-suitable habitat on Mars. "Making use of orbital dynamics" for what purpose? That's a means, not an end.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was a feasible way to get payloads into an orbit (because that's what you have to do if you want to return whatever went down to the surface), don't you think that we might be already doing something like this here on earth?

Ahhh, the ol' "no ones tried it so it obviously won't work" argument. Even if you had some sort of citation to confirm your wild-ass guess, you still aren't accounting for the differences in atmosphere between Venus and Earth.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is a human breathable gas mix is a lifting gas on Venus.

It'd be harder to build a habitat that sunk on Venus than one that floats due to the competing need to minimize launch mass of the mission.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Marxist Hacker 42]

Don't forget the Moon is indeed a Harsh Mistress. What this really means is that the Trump Administration wants to replace the Rod of God with cheaper rocks.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Strider-]

ED: That should read "there's not even a large thermosphere temperature spike" like there is on Earth. You can see the temperature profiles here [astronomynotes.com] (I can dig up some graphics for higher up if you'd like)

That said, the thermosphere spike is largely of academic interest. The atmospheric pressure is so low at those altitudes that the thermal loading is close to nil. Basically the atoms/molecules in the atmosphere are moving really fast at those altitudes, so they're "hot", but there are just so few of them that they won't really heat anything of normal density up. I don't have a source handy, but I recall reading that it basically means that you could easily overcome it with radiators, and radiators are an incredibly inefficient way of rejecting heat.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Strider-]

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.

Heck, during the first world war, the Germans attacked London with Zeppelins, and those were incredibly difficult to shoot down, despite being filled with Hydrogen. The Brits would spray the Zeppelins with bullets, filling them with holes, but because the gas bags were at ambient pressure, there was very little escape.

Another example was a research balloon launched out of Canada in 1998. It's mission-ending systems failed to operate (detach the payload, burn a large hole in the envelope), and it drifted across the Atlantic. Canadian fighter pilots put more than 1000 rounds of ammunition through it, UK and US did the same, and it continued. Eventually, the Russians shot it with various air to air missiles, before it finally came down in Scandinavia.

The takeaway is that lighter than air craft are very difficult to take down when operating at ambient pressure.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

We have tried zeppeliners. They work, but they are not exactly free to operate. They don't stay airborne for more than a few weeks at a time. Lots of maintenance. From where would a venus zeppeliner resupply? There are probably ways of getting energy and lifting gas, but parts? Replacement skin, replacement struts - and all the stuff humans needs . . .

Re:I agree - moon first

[religionofpeas]

Cloud city mother fucker

That sounds awfully boring. Why not just move to an underground bunker on Earth, and paint the walls white ?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that Venus deserves some consideration for exploration as well, but equal to Mars? Sure you can float some atmospheric habitats and use some resources but that's about it. On Mars you can actually explore (dig, bore, etc), build, and there is a whole lot less risk (you have ground, the atmosphere isn't acid, etc). Also one of the major reasons for going to Mars is the search for past life (or perhaps even limited current life), there is virtually no chance that anything lives on Venus.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Shadowmist]

And for those who keep talking about creating cloud cities on Venus, do remember that the clouds on Venus are generally full of sulphuric acid.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Shadowmist]

Have we tried?

No because basically habitats low enough for people to breathe without masks tend to crumple and crash with the least bit of weather. The whole history of powered airships in particular, the Shenandoah, the Akron, and the Macon, as well as the Hindenburg is largely a series of crashes due to weather.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Shadowmist]

We can't even do midair habitats on Earth

We absolutely can; we've been making airships since 1852. If you're asking why nobody's made a farm in one and lived in one, where's the economic case for that?

And what happened to almost all of those airships once they met a bit of weather?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Don't get me wrong, Mars is not resource-free. For example, it seems to be a good place for large bolide mineral deposits (Sudbury / Norilsk style). But it's not exactly a mineral treasure trove in general, and most of the potential is covered in deep overburden. Plus, each habitat is constrained to the specific location it's in - but not all essential resources will be located in the same place.

I won't repeat what's been written elsewhere in this thread (or is covered extensively in the link), but Venus is an entirely different ballpark when it comes to resources. It's a natural environment for enrichment (and not just simple mineral enrichment, but isotopic as well - deuterium levels are over 2 orders of magnitude higher on Venus than on Earth) A Venus habitat is also infinitely mobile (and quite rapidly at that). Venus has little aeolian overburden and no fluvial overburden (at least not from water). The surface atmosphere is also so dense that you can dredge rather than having to shovel. But some of the most interesting resources aren't on the surface at all; they're precipitated out in various layers of the atmosphere, as Venus's hot, acidic atmosphere boils/erodes a lot of minerals out of the surface rocks.

"Making use of orbital dynamics" for what purpose?

Going elsewhere in the solar system - return trips to Earth, trips to the asteroid belt, to the outer planets, etc. Venus has a much stronger Oberth effect, more frequent launch windows, and can do Earth assists or multiple Earth/Venus assists when outbound, depending on the delta-V requirements. Mars isn't in a very good location from an orbital dynamics perspective. High-dV (fast) earthbound transfers in particular go much faster from Venus than from Mars.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Shadowmist]

Venus and Mars both have one weakness in common. Neither planet has a significant magnetic field, so there isn't any Van Allen protection against the nasty stuff the Sun throws at us.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Shadowmist]

The moon should be the new Australia. Make it a penal colony so we have a reason to send all the niiggers, towelheads, kikes, chinks, wetbacks, and all other types of darkies, to the moon. Declare the moon off limits and let society advance rapidly on Earth without the evil behavior of the darkies to hold us back.

Someone has been reading way too much Robert Heinlein mixed with David Duke.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Really? Living in a floating garden (so big you can skydive indoors) with transparent walls in a brightly mistscape, a veritable floating over hell, sounds like a boring place?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

> The moon has a lower gravity well than Mars - easier to land on - much less delta-v required.

That's why it's impossible for NASA have landed on the near side moon, as they claimed

The moon is clearly up above us, and has a lot less gravity than Earth. So anyone landing on the near side (facing Earth) would just fall off. They would have to land on the far (top) side.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

I agree that Venus deserves some consideration for exploration as well, but equal to Mars?

Superior, really, in most regards.

Sure you can float some atmospheric habitats and use some resources but that's about it.

You've literally described a colony. And life on Earth (minus the "floating" part). Self-sustaining societies using local resources is the goal.

On Mars you can actually explore (dig, bore, etc), build,

Digging and boring is work, something you want to avoid having to do as much as possible. On Venus you can dredge the surface and get resources straight from the air. Mind you, you can also dig and bore - NASA has worked on drilling on Venus, and of course, explosives work everywhere - but that's activity that you don't want to have to do if you don't need to. And again, building / sustaining is the whole point of "using resources".

and there is a whole lot less risk (you have ground

Ground is a risk. If you don't believe so, look at the number of probes that have failed on landing for a wide range of reasons. On Venus, your "landing" ellipse is massive.

the atmosphere isn't acid, etc

1) Acid mists are, as have been mentioned many times, rather sparse on Venus - not even that much more concentrated than OSHA workplace standards. It would actually be easier if they were more concentrated.

2) Mars's atmosphere is hardly extant. A Venus habitat has only a bare minimum overpressure (~500 Pa). A Mars habitat has a 50-100 kPa overpressure. The latter is much more at risk in the event of failures.

3) The dust in Mars' environment is extremely hazardous - not just due to standard PM / silicosis risks, but also because of hexavalent chromium, arsenic, and enough perchlorates to burn your skin.

lso one of the major reasons for going to Mars is the search for past life (or perhaps even limited current life), there is virtually no chance that anything lives on Venus.

The possibility of life on Mars makes missions to (and especially from) Mars much more expensive. There's still the possibility of finding fossils on Venus, in some of the highland terrae - Venus once used to have Earthlike oceans, and before Earth did at that. But because it's judged to be unlikely to host life today, you don't have to perform such onerous sterilization efforts, both inbound and outbound.

And think about what you're saying. Do you think there's life on Mars today? So are you totally okay mass imports of bacteria hitching rides from Earth, and conversely back from Mars? Because that's an inevitable accompaniment to colonization. If you really think there's life on Mars, you should want to declare it a human-free zone.

Re:I agree - moon first

[encad]

At least Venus has an atmosphere to neutralise a lot of the radiation.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

All of those problems are long since figured out. They're not even hard. It's just money and time. But it would require moderate belt tightening for like 3 years for the richest couple of countries in the world, so fuck it.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Green Mountain Bot]

Mars has canyons in which caves could easily be dug, which would shield pretty much all of the radiation.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

** Ed: "veritable heaven floating over hell" . Sigh....

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Unfortunately, not as much as the common conception; it's more like a bad smog / vog. Sulfuric acid is the most valuable resource to a Venus colony, being a readily scrubbed compound that represents the primary source of water.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Nuclear-powered backhoes aren't exactly a dime a dozen, nor is hard-rock excavation easy to begin with. And if you're in a cave, you're also not getting light. And of course you're not in a cave when you're doing any work outside.

Venus's atmosphere is sufficient to shield humans against even major solar radiation events, even though it lacks an intrinsic magnetic field (only a weak induced one).

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

But if it's really going to be like Australia then in 200 years time it'll be the weathiest, happiest, healthiest, safest and most sucessful society the world has ever known, just like the Australia now.
Then where will you be ?

Smoking space-crack in your ghetto while engaged in a shoot out with your neighbours no doubt.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Lost Race]

You're in the wrong discussion. We're talking about an expedition to Venus, not Venice.

Re: I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

The moon is a harsh Vice President.

Re:I agree - moon first

[Rei]

Excepting one major case where the airship was poorly designed and only half reinforced, nothing from the weather itself. Running into the ground on the other hand....

Does it need to be mentioned that there is no ground to run into in Venus's middle cloud layer ~54km over the surface?

Re:I agree - moon first

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Venus is only attractive if you are a climate change denier. Its excellency has definitely taken a hit in the last few billion years.

Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll probably take a bit more time than you kids have in office.

Hopefully, you can't see the moon out your cell windows.

Re:Good Luck

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA under trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljmEkWkT5Qc

Re:Good Luck

[stooo]

"Before astronauts go to Mars, they will return to the Moon"

Yeah, perhaps, but they will be Chinese people.
Or perhaps no, they will perhaps not do all this pointless stuff.

Re:Good Luck

[Anonymous Coward]

pointless? Wow.

You really are a dumbass, aren't you?

First off, NASA survives on a budget about the same as the money we spend sending free shit we give other countries.
Secondly, and more importantly spinoff's from NASA research used to send humans to space yields huge benefits for humans on this planet; ref:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjC3o-J_9vWAhWKKyYKHQhjBnEQFggyMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fspinoff.nasa.gov%2FSpinoff2008%2Fpdf%2Fspinoff2008.pdf&usg=AOvVaw3NmhmsKk93vF1TKdeyGDC4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

thirdly, the basic science knowledge gained speaks for itself.

So, in short, fuck off moron.

Re:Good Luck

[taiwanjohn]

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.

Re:Good Luck

[Shadowmist]

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.

Not everything. the threat to dismantle climate science programs is all too real.

Re:Good Luck

[Weirsbaski]

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...

If Pence is a NASA fanboi that's nice and all, but just being a fanboi goes about zero percent of making something like this happen. It takes money+commitment to do the planning+design+building of the stuff that turns ambitious ideas into reality.

Laughing at the VP's Ex-Pence

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA just have to make the rocket look less like a p-n-s, och the moon less like a br--st.

Might not be a bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if the Chinese get established first on the moon they are going to say....
All ur moons are belong 2 us

But won't be dining with any green alien ladies.

[h33t l4x0r]

Not without their wives present.

God bless...

[Anonymous Coward]

... our astromen and their daring!

Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[wisebabo]

... 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.

It's only now, in the somewhat clearer light of day after the election year (and now that Obama's blackness isn't quite so apparent), that it has become obvious how wrong most (all?) of Trump's positions were. Like his "I'll slap China with a 40% tariff on day one" or "I'll declare them a currency manipulator" or "I'll throw out NAFTA" or (of course) "Mexico will pay for the wall" or "Hillary's in bed with Goldman Sachs" (when three of Trump's top positions are from GS) or "I'll drain the swamp" and now allowing prior lobbyists to be hired by the White House or "The Iranian deal was a disaster" (he's recertified it twice) or "It won't happen" with a North Korean ICBM test to allowing ICBM and even H-bomb tests or "I'll support LGBT" people" then reversing protections and "no need to count them in the Census". Oh and of course let's not forget his insistence on demolishing Obamacare despite the fact that neither he nor congress nor the senate can come up with something better than what he has says is "a disaster called the big lie".

So I figure that Trump (and his supporters) just can't stand anything that Obama did so of course he'll decide to go to the moon because Obama wasn't going to. Then again, maybe it's just a lack of judgment as indicated by his campaign being assisted by a hostile foreign power (Russia) with several of his former staff now under multiple investigations (Flynn, Manafort) for TRAITOROUS crimes (not e-mails, think assisting a foreign power, $12M paid in one arrangement alone). Speaking of which, his wishing to continue to prosecute Clinton for using an a private e-mail account for official business is obviously hypocritical considering that SIX senior white house staff are using private e-mail accounts (with Kushner using three!) while serving in the White House. This lack of judgement of course extends to his evaluation of people like the many times he's flipped what he says about his top people from hiring them to "I have confidence in them" to firing them (Comey, Price, Bannon, Priebus). That of course doesn't count the number of times he's praised then flipped on people saying for example (Hillary Clinton) "is a great woman. And a good woman." and I "think she really works hard." and "I think she’d make a great president" to basically saying she should be imprisoned and implying much worse ("Shoot the b**tch" was a T-shirt he apparently didn't have problem with).

So, and I think you fellow slash dotters, have to SERIOUSLY ask yourself this question. Spend some time, don't jump to conclusions and weigh the evidence. Is he (and his followers) bigoted or just stupid?

I think a lot of both. :(

As far as going to the moon or not, that's for another post. However the Chinese :( or Elon Musk :) will probably get there first

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad that this incoherent political rant was modded up.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Kjella]

... 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.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit!

You could be the left-wing Alex Jones. I've not heard such a steaming pile of crap since I watched an Alex Jones video for a minute or 2 just to see who he was.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

Your non-partisan post had me going until you said the following.

"However the Chinese :( or Elon Musk :) will probably get there first"

Well for starters there's the very obvious fact that the US made it to the moon decades ago but I can write that off as poor writing on your part. The part I can't forgive is that there's any sort of reason for Americans to go back to the moon. Sure, it's a great feel good landmark for those who have never made it but for America the question needs to be asked as to how it is at all beneficial to visit there again.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who discovered America?

If you are like most people, you'll say Christopher Columbus. The thing is, Columbus was the *last* person to discover America. He became the last, because with Columbus, white people (the only people who mattered at the time) colonized America. Several people discovered America before Columbus, among them Eric the Red and/or his son about 400 years earlier.

They were more or less forgotten, and Columbus got the credit. Because he not only went there, the people he brought there *stayed* there.

Now, who will your grand-grand-grand-children learn was the first country on the moon? The USA or China?

It's not about who was literally first, but who was the first to stay there. Not just for a few days or years (like Eric the Red), but colonized the place.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[DarkOx]

Its not racism. Its simply politics has become a team a team sport. There are plenty of people who are against every position Trump takes simply because he is Trump.

The next problem with much of the issues you cite is Trump and the traditional GOP differ on them. Trump isn't as reckless and stupid as people make him out to be. He should torpedo NAFTA, blow up the Iran "deal" and tariff the crap out China, but those are steps that achieving any positive outcome from require subsequent action by congress to capitalize on. Action he knows he can't probably get.

Heck Trump can't even exercise legal rule making authority congress already has given the POTUS. Some lefty group who had not problem when Obama put in various immigration controls will sue and some lefty judges will find reasons to block actions based on standards and suppositions about the presidents racial prejudices that law in no way specifics.

Essentially there is no respect for the law on either side of the main line DNC/RNC types. Actually in terms of obeying the letter of the law and NOT exceeding authority of the office Trump has a way better record than Obama so far. Consider all the illegal unmaksing of Americans in intelligence gathering the left has no problem with Obama and his admin having done? If Trump or his people did anything remotely like that he'd be denounced as a fascist before the ink on the orders was wet.

So, and I think you fellow slash dotters, have to SERIOUSLY ask yourself this question. Spend some time, don't jump to conclusions and weigh the evidence. Are Trumps opponents largely a group of sore losers who are willing to make cynical claims of racism and bigotry because they know it hurt the president regardless of the truth or are they mostly just stupid?

I think a lot of both :(

As far as going to the moon or not, that's for another post. However the Chinese :( or Elon Musk :) will probably get there first

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

A. China is talking about establishing a base on the moon, putting us in a bit of a strategic bind. Without doing the same, we risk allowing a competitor to gain a permanent edge on us. If you'll recall the "Space Race", strategic competition with the USSR is what took us to the moon to begin with.

B. But you prejudged the situation in a spectacular display of dramatic irony, so I guess you never gave yourself a chance to consider any other possibilities. There's an old adage that encapsulates it rather well - "the pot calling the kettle black".

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[houghi]

You know when Trump gave intel to Putin? That was fun.

And don't forget that Elon Musk is an African-American. (Both continents, not countries)

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[JoshuaZ]

It is true that people are very likely to judge a given policy based on a large extent whether it came from their own party or an opposing party. And this isn't just US specific or political party specific; it even happens in other disputes. See for example https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249728513_Reactive_Devaluation_of_an_Israeli_vs_Palestinian_Peace_Proposal where Israelis and Palestinians would react positively or negatively to the same peace proposal simply based on who they were told had made the proposal in question. However, even given that this is a widespread thing, Trump's behavior has been far more extreme than that. Obama and W. Bush for example did roll back rules, regulations, and policies each made by their predecessor from the other party, but not nearly as extensively as Trump is doing. There really is a massive difference in scope here. And that's occurred even as Trump has made very few novel legislative or regulatory moves (other than just massive attempts at deregulation).

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[StormReaver]

Obamacare was originally a Republican proposal.

Correct. Also, when Mitt Romney was about to leave the Governorship in Massachusetts, one of his final acts was to enact mandated universal healthcare that is shockingly similar to the (un)Affordable Health Care Act. It was applauded by Republicans, and panned by Democrats. Unfortunately, it was just as bad an idea then as the (un)Affordable Health Care Act is now.

This seesawing by Democrats and Republicans, based solely on who promotes any given idea, had gotten tiresome to me 30 years ago. Now, it's just so intolerable that I always vote third party for state and national positions (I don't even care about their qualifications). Locally, I vote for the person who does the best job -- regardless of party affiliation.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

It's polarization. The "us vs. them" group mentality has deepened to the point where there's little to no room for empathy, leading to a situation where the sides don't even want to try and understand each other, don't trust each other, don't want to work together, and can't even hear what the other side says - replacing every word with what they infer from their own prejudices.

Sometimes I think it's because the rhetoric became so hyperbolic and demonizing a few decades back that after a while people forgot it was just hyperbole and absurd claims. I like to think there was a time when people recognized BS deflections for what they were, that if a politician said the other party's policies hurt minorities in inner cities and the response was, "That's racist. You're evil and hate minorities", they would be called out for responding to criticism with absurd accusations instead of defending their policies. Now, when exactly that happened, it was amplified instead of decried as a blatant deflection.

We need to remember that we don't all share the same perspective. That Right and Left don't see things the same way, don't resolve conflicts the same way, have different opinions on how things should be run, BUT BOTH WANT THE SAME THING. A strong, happy, healthy and prosperous nation where everyone can reach their full potential, and live a good life even if their potential isn't all that great.

Instead, we have, "We're right, only we are right, and we're so obviously right that sincere disagreement is impossible. So if you do claim to disagree, it must be because you're evil and trying to hurt others to enrich yourself. How else could you possibly disagree with our clearly superior ideas."

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

and Clinton gave North Korea a nuclear power plant.

Whos the fuck wit now?

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

That's a myth. The Heritage Foundation published a document (book really) that outlined a number of possible ways to reform the system, including a loose mandate that everyone buy insurance, with tax credits to cover the cost to encourage compliance. The authors of the ACA took that one idea, replaced encouragement through tax credits with punishment through a tax penalty, and used it as one part of their plan.

It was NOT a Republican proposal, it contained a fragment of an idea put forth by a Conservative think-tank.

Or maybe you're thinking of "Romneycare", where a rather liberal State legislature did the same thing. It still wasn't a Republican idea, it was just signed into law by a Republican governor whose veto would have been overridden.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

Because the Chinese are talking about a permanent base and our relationship with them is under "Realist" conditions.

If it was the EU talking about a moon base, we'd probably collaborate while keeping NASA's focus on Mars, but our relations there are Liberal-Institutionalist so we play cooperative, non-zero-sum games like building formal (and democratic) institutions. Realist relations with China means we mostly play competitive zero-sum games, despite all the trade and interdependence.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

to be honest, persons that supported President Obama are now doing that same thing to President Trump.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Democrats had control in both houses when "Obamacare" was passed, they had no need to 'get it passed republicans' as you say.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no it wasn't

Harry Reid developed it first. he is not a republican.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you want to go anywhere else in the solar system, a good start would be to build shit outside of a large gravity well. The obvious place is in the asteroid belt, however that is difficult and we need to take the time to develop the deep space knowledge needed to use those resources. The Moon has many resources available and is a fairly 'shallow' gravity well, it is also 'close by' so if issues arise, one can send help.

So, why go to the Moon, well, as stated, it has resources, aluminum, water, etc. It is a shallow gravity well, it is within 3 days of earth (not 9 months or more). It is insolated at about the same rate at the earth, so power is easy to come by (relatively speaking).

An automated production facility setup there to mine metals and water and then those mined materials used to construct an underground habitat humans can live in creates a construction/research facility that one could use to then create the ships one would need to go further afield in the Solar System.

With 1/6th the gravity, ships would need significantly less reaction mass (chemical rocket propulsion) to launch to other planets, this means that they could have more reaction mass to accelerate towards the planet of choice, thus arriving there sooner, potentially, or carrying more payload or both.

Also, as the moon is some distance from the earth, revisiting nuclear propulsion methods is more politically feasible.

So, while Mars or the Asteroid belt may seem more reasonable choices, they both are significantly further away, meaning longer transit times, and from this deeper gravity well we have here, ships payloads become miniscule. If we can mine the moon, then use those materials to create the ships needed to explore and mine the asteroids, and other planets/moons (Titan for example) we can have the benefits of less reaction mass/larger payload/shorter transit times.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[dywolf]

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.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[dywolf]

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....

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You don't see Democrats saying "that was a great Republican idea, let's keep working on that" very often either.

Generally they reserve that language for ideas that weren't really Republicans', where they're trying to cast a Democratic-centric proposal as bipartisan so they can try to shame/intimidate Republicans into getting on board. One of the most extreme examples is the truly laughable proposition that Obamacare was a "Republican idea," a meme someone quite predictably has already thrown into this thread.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[JohnFen]

This seesawing by Democrats and Republicans, based solely on who promotes any given idea, had gotten tiresome to me 30 years ago.

100% this.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

The left wants a single player system.
Using a mandate to buy private insurance IS the part they disagree with, and it undermines the entire concept of a socialized healthcare system.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

Well what are our goals for another moon visit? All I've been hearing is that we should go back to the moon "Cuz China doin it!". That is not at all a good reason to blow a few billion dollars.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Space Race with the USSR was about demonstrating reliable rocket technology, to remove doubt in the reliability of nuclear missiles. The fear that Sputnik put into the world was "if they can to that with a radio they can do it with a nuke", and the US kept being second best. The Apollo program was about picking a goal hard enough that the USSR couldn't just throw something together to buy time for R&D to catch up. In essence the USSR was winning the sprints so the US challenged them to a marathon hoping to pull a tortoise and the hair victory.

There's nothing particularly strategically valuable about the moon itself.
It'd make a decent location for a second strike system, but not really any better than squirreling away a bunch of subs.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[cellocgw]

Well what are our goals for another moon visit? All I've been hearing is that we should go back to the moon "Cuz China doin it!". That is not at all a good reason to blow a few billion dollars.

It should be pretty obvious: if Mycroft is going to hurl moon rocks at Earth, we want it to be a USA Mycroft, not a Chinese one. ( Yes I know Mike was aiding Lunar Separatists. Relax)

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not trying to whitewash history. He's just stupid.
You nasty ole "troll" you.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[dywolf]

You don't see Democrats saying "that was a great Republican idea, let's keep working on that" very often either.

Romneycare.
Obamacare.
Carbon Credits.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not racism. Its simply politics has become a team a team sport. There are plenty of people who are against every position Trump takes simply because he is Trump.

Experience with Trump has taught us that that's the most prudent course.

The next problem with much of the issues you cite is Trump and the traditional GOP differ on them.

The traditional GOP is dead. We now have the new Radical Reactionary GOP.

Trump isn't as reckless and stupid as people make him out to be.

You're right, he's worse.

He should torpedo NAFTA, blow up the Iran "deal" and tariff the crap out China, but those are steps that achieving any positive outcome from require subsequent action by congress to capitalize on.

Anything that Trump would do, would require subsequent action by Congress to Capitalize on. They do have the law-making authority in the country, you know.

Action he knows he can't probably get.

I wish I could believe that. Then he'd be intelligent. Sadly, experience has shown that he can't even recognize why the Affordable Care Act repeals are failing.

I mean, everybody asked WHERE the plan was from the start, but apparently Trump didn't realize how complicated it would be until much later.

Heck Trump can't even exercise legal rule making authority congress already has given the POTUS. Some lefty group who had not problem when Obama put in various immigration controls will sue and some lefty judges will find reasons to block actions based on standards and suppositions about the presidents racial prejudices that law in no way specifics.

Of course the law about racial prejudices isn't that specific, it's based on principles, a general case, rather than some attempt to be specific that some jerkass will weasel their way around. We have plenty of problems with that already.

But yeah, Trump has earned the consequences of his own words and actions, by making his declarations, he's created an appearance to the court of his malicious intent. It's his own fault, you know. He could have avoided it with a little temperance, but no, no, he decided to run his mouth and make blow-hard statements, and what do you know, it came back to haunt him.

Essentially there is no respect for the law on either side of the main line DNC/RNC types.

Good for them. The laws are often broken and flawed.

Actually in terms of obeying the letter of the law and NOT exceeding authority of the office Trump has a way better record than Obama so far.

Does he?

Consider all the illegal unmaksing of Americans in intelligence gathering the left has no problem with Obama and his admin having done?

You're 15+ years too late to complain about that, all you're doing is making yourself a partisan shill. I could even point out to you the FBI under Hoover, and the good-ole days of Red Hunting, but no, no, apparently you don't want to remember that.

If Trump or his people did anything remotely like that he'd be denounced as a fascist before the ink on the orders was wet.

Please, the cheering crowds of Trump supporters when they hear his bold declarations would still stay the same. Some of them would even encourage it.

So, and I think you fellow slash dotters, have to SERIOUSLY ask yourself this question. Spend some time, don't jump to conclusions and weigh the evidence. Are Trumps opponents largely a group of sore losers who are willing to make cynical claims of racism and bigotry because they know it hurt the president regardless of the truth or are they mostly just stupid?

I think a lot of both :(

Now ask yourself, with serious examination, spend some time, don't jump to conclusions, and weigh the e

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

*Applause*

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

To be awesome? Seriously, what are our goals with the ISS, with going to Mars, with any extra-terrestrial endeavor? Discovery, expansion, doing something impressive as a nation, finding new and unexpected goals, and yes, because we can't let a competitor get an advantage over us.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

You should have read the Heritage paper instead of just linking it. It requires having insurance, and it taxes employer provided benefits as income (the ACA only does that for "Cadillac" plans). Pretty much everything else is different. Like credits instead of direct subsidies, structured to encourage out-of-pocket spending so as to repair market feedback, serious Medicaid/Medicare reforms, it explicitly contradicts the employer mandate, it gives no subsidies to insurers, and so on and so on.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

None of what you say applies to the moon as we've been there a half dozen times. Good for China for playing catchup 4 decades later but our money would be infinitly better spent towards a trip to mars rather then revisiting the moon yet again.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

If we were only talking about landing a pod and grabbing some rocks I'd agree. But if they're talking about semi-permanent settlement, then we have to do the same.

Think of it as a way to test and improve our designs and construction techniques for low-gravity, low-pressure, environments while staying within resupply/rescue range.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

"Think of it as a way to test and improve our designs and construction techniques for low-gravity, low-pressure, environments while staying within resupply/rescue range."

You mean like what we do on the ISS? I ask because what you describe sounds like what we've already been doing for years now.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

Building in free fall and on the bottom of a gravity well are two very different things, no? But that's besides the point, I only brought it up as an example of what we could get out of it.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

We build stuff all the time at the bottom of a gravity well. Odds are you've even seen a few such constructions over the course of your day!

Sorry but "Cuz China doin it!" isnt a good reason at all. We should be doing it because its the best use of our scarce NASA funding and so far I haven't heard a compelling case for that.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

Okay, you have a good point. But if you want Congress to allocate more resources to NASA, then telling them a competitor is going to get an upper hand is traditionally an effective approach.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[skam240]

We live in a world of finite wealth. Unless we have actual long term goals for the moon going back there is stupid.

If we lived in a world of infinite resource, yeah, sure, moon, great, whatever. But we don't. There are better ways to spend our money.

Re:Actually I think Trump wants to go...

[sabbede]

And in a perfect world, we wouldn't have to worry about strategic advantages in zero sum games and NASA could just be for exploration. Then again, NASA only exists because we couldn't let the USSR gain a literal upper hand.

It'll be yuuge

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be the best trip to the moon ever.

There will be no greater trips to the moon.

Our next trip to the moon will be so magnificent they will make movies about it.

But, why?

[campuscodi]

But, why?

Re:But, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

because the chinese announced their plans earlier in the year to build a base on the moon. hashtag DUH

Re:But, why?

[hord]

Because we are back in the cold war. Time for arms races, nuclear deterrence, and government funded pissing matches. Why did we go to the moon the first time? I've been told we don't know how to get back because we threw the rocket plans out. Some science.

Re: But, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because
MURICA!!!

Re:But, why?

[mark-t]

We know how to get back... It's just (still) bloody expensive, and for little to no objectively measurable gain in the short term. Certainly not within any time span short enough to fit within a single presidential term.

Re:But, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

We still have the plans but they rely on now obsolete tools and processes.

It's kind of like building a deck with power tools and precision cut lumber, based on plans drawn up by somone who thought you'd use rope lashings and whatever fallen trees and sticks you can find.

Re:But, why?

[Shotgun]

Why go to Mars?

Re:But, why?

[davester666]

TinyHands wants a couple minutes of good press.

So, before he is impeached, expect the body of a dead Astronaut to be strapped into the nose cone of a missile and fired at the moon. "See! Mission Accomplished!"

Re:But, why?

[JThundley]

Pence wants to start an AIDS epidemic there as well.

Re:But, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. If we can't sustain a presence on the Moon, we can't on Mars. We need practice on a foreign body, and we need to insert a time delay in the comms equivalent to that of Earth-Mars.

#fakeNews

[Anonymous Coward]

#fakeNews. Sad. Gina.

Re:#fakeNews

[Rei]

China shina gina shina.

Strategic goal

[Anonymous Coward]

it sounds more like empire and military ambissions, instead of for the greater good of mankind. Weaponizing the moon? More war-mongering from America?

Vice presidents are two pence a quarter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a damn? If we did, listening to Gore would have been a better investment of time.

Titan Submarine

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, imagine the tech challenges to solve making the submarine and exploring Titans hydrocarbon seas. I bet there's life there, certainly enough basis for organics and plenty of energy. Even without life, it would be a major technical challenge.

Visit the moon rock again? Why? That was Bush's idiocy. Go to a different Mars rock, this time landing a man there because we've already landed so many probes already its no longer news worthy. Why?

But Titan, that would be something far far different. A stretch goal.

Not for Trump though, this would be longer than the last bit of his life (at 71, fat, stressed and unhealthy, he's likely got 5-6 years left), and certainly longer than his presidency, but maybe for the next President to initiate.

Re:Titan Submarine

[Rei]

Titan will be an interesting destination** once we can get the trip times down; it has a number of things going for it, including reasonable pressures, minimal radiation, easy local mobility, and a fascinating scientific mission (and the thermal insulation requirements are lower than most people would imagine). But until trip times can come down, it's just too far.

** Assuming that that sort of level of gravity doesn't prove to be hazardous to human health.

What if the the aliens are gay?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if the aliens are gay?

Gayliens.

Total pandering...

[Timothy2.0]

If this is to be the new focus of NASA, how about shoveling the money they need their way?

Re:Total pandering...

[OwnedByTwoCats]

That would get in the way of the very important tax cuts.

As long as they take Pence with them, great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and leave him there! This guy just looks EVIL! He's lying scum.

Don't send people

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need or want people in the submarine. Their only baggage that has to be brought back. The probe is expendable.

Gravity is not really an issue here, except for returning stuff from the gravity well. Bigger planets have more gravity, but then they're bigger, and you're further from the center and so the gravity at the surface isn't really much different. The escape velocity though, that increases significantly with gravity, so things get trapped.

It's something like a 20 year project I think. So you're looking at a selfish President in his 50's to initiate it. Or one less selfish looking to a longer goal than his lifespan.

Re:Don't send people

[Rei]

Sorry - this discussion was about manned travel, so I assumed you were talking about manned travel as well. Further robotic probes to Titan, I'm quite the supporter of that. :) Unfortunately, Mars gets the lion's share of the unmanned exploration budget, so....

I'll believe it when I see it...

[Anonymous Coward]

How odd that they haven't been back to the moon in fifty years... yet the computer that would be needed today for the lunar module would be a thousandth as powerful as the one in your phone. And all other technologies have advanced beyond belief since then, especially CAD and manufacturing methods, yet still they haven't been 'back' to the moon...

Re:I'll believe it when I see it...

[darthsilun]

Where's that story about the CIA having wanted a base on the Moon. Why? Because they thought it'd be cool to say, I dunno, I guess to the KGB or something, "But we have a base on the Moon."

But if even the CIA couldn't make it happen, then what do you suppose the odds are that little ol' NASA would be able to?

Then again, let's just start telingl everyone there's coal on the Moon. We'll be there in no time.

Go get an astroid

[Anonymous Coward]

Then we can test mining equipment and start building a stockpile of resources in space.

Re:Go get an astroid

[Anonymous Coward]

Find the coal asteroid. That'll get things moving fast.

Will Mexico pay for that too?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or China? MAGA.

The negroe

[Anonymous Coward]

.$.$.$.$

Re:But won't be dining with any green alien ladies

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because he'll just glarb in his pants.

Send Trunmp

[Anonymous Coward]

couldn't we just send Trumpf instead?

Re:Send Trunmp

[PinkyGigglebrain]

couldn't we just send Trumpf instead?

Are you crazy? That would be seen as an act of war by almost every sentient in the Galaxy.

mod Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Ver7 distracting to you get distracted start a holy war similarly grisly of events today, (7000+1400+700)*4 1t. Do not share Baby take my

m od do3n

[Anonymous Coward]

Leavi8g the play fucking market flaws nin the BSD arseholes at Walnut

Yay! \o/

[easyTree]

Fast food establishments on the moon!

Re:Yay! \o/

[sabbede]

If I'm going to live there, I'll need burgers.

Re:Yay! \o/

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the trouble with fast food places. No atmosphere.

Unnecessary politicization.

[sabbede]

This sentence was extraneous and does nothing but express the author's political leanings. "It's not surprising that the Trump administration is valuing short-term gains over a longer, more ambitious project."

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.

Re:Unnecessary politicization.

[Surak_Prime]

That isn't really a partisan statement. (Whether it was *intended* to be or not is a different discussion.) It's been quite a while since we've had an administration, from either party, that has shown serious interest in goals that extend beyond what can advantage them personally within their own term(s). And that's at least doubly true for space exploration goals. They will pander a lot about supposed grand visions, but the money never goes where their mouths are.

Re:Unnecessary politicization.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems slashdot nowadays doesn't even give that crummy link to the submission in the firehose, so we can't double-check what was the submitter's fault and what was BeauHD's... (Well, this mishap was primarily engadget's, I guess.)

But now that I look at the firehose, it seems the editors are largely ignoring the submissions and are instead getting the majority of stories from preset RSS feeds or something.

Easily solved the Trump way...

[GrpA]

They'll buy them tickets on a Russian or Chinese moon-shuttle service...

Why?

[p51d007]

I was a child, growing up in the "space race" age. Watched every launch from Alan Sheppard through the last moon landing. But, that was a race against the Soviet Union. Yes, it would be nice to go back to the moon, if anything else, to PROVE we were there once before! But, what real science would come out of it, versus the amount of money the government will waste getting us there? Leave something like this to private industry. It will be faster, and less expensive.

Re:Why?

[Quantus347]

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.

Re:Why?

[mark-t]

If nothing else, it makes a better launch point for larger scale missions because it requires less fuel to take off from the moon than it does from Earth.

Of course, this does presume that it is possible to process the raw resources already available on the moon to create more rocket fuel, and I'm not sure if that's workable.

Re:Why?

[WrongMonkey]

You are begging the question, in the original sense. Each of your three points boil down to: we need to improve our space capabilities, so that we can explore space. But you still have answered the question of why? Why do we need to send spam-in-a-can into space? There is certainly no economic justification; no resources on Mars or the Moon are cheaper to extract and transport than on Earth. There is no scientific justification; robots are more capable of collected scientific data.

Re:Why?

[Strider-]

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.

Landing on the Moon and Mars really aren't all that similar. Due to its lack of atmosphere, and lower gravity, landing on the Moon is a fairly simple propulsive affair. Kill your orbital velocity, which isn't that high to begin with, and use your engine to land gently on the surface.

Mars, on the other hand, has twice the gravity, and just enough atmosphere to be a problem. There's enough gas there that you need to have a heat shield, and can't build like you would for the moon, but you can't rely on it for the final stages of your landing (parachutes, propellers, what have you).

Thirdly, they represent very different situations once on the surface. Lunar dust is extremely abrasive, as it's had no water/wind to wear it down. This makes it absolute hell on any mechanical joint or seal that has to move. It's really hard to build equipment that will last a long time. On Mars, you probably don't have quite the abrasive issue, but you do have severe problems of toxicity due to the perchlorates in the soil.

Re:Why?

[Shotgun]

The same question is justifiably asked of why go to Mars? What is the "scientific justification"? Cuts some rocks to find that microscopic organisms might have existed there eons ago? Who cares? How will that affect anyone's life? What are you going to do differently now that you know? You may have an insatiable thirst for useless knowledge, but it is the ideas of humans traveling the stars that excites me.

The way to build a transcontinental railroad is not to build a steam engine, demonstrate that it can cross a campus, and then try to sell the idea of going around the world. You cross the campus with it, then show that it can cross the city. Then the state. That it can carry cargo, then that it can carry passengers. That it can cross several states, and eventually you reach the opposite ocean. Anything else is just a friggen stunt.

Re:Why?

[Shotgun]

And we won't know if it is workable if we don't build a moon base. And if it doesn't work on the moon, why would we think that it would work on Mars?

VPs get to make stuff up like this

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Remember Biden's "cancer moonshot"?
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/node/352601

There was even a "Blue Ribbon Panel" (cue Dave Barry).

we need a real orbital space station

[Anonymous Coward]

idiots ... NASA and Washington, what a bunch of corrupt and incompetent greedy jerks

we could have, and should have, a real space station

instead we have an evil upper class that knows only endless selfishness and self-aggrandizement

traitors to mankind, all of em ...

One way trip

[zelda64]

Thanks for volunteering yourself, Mr. Vice President. Unfortunately due to NASA budget cuts to focus on important things such as building a wall, we can only afford a one way trip. There is room for your running mate and his entire family, thankfully. Bonus, there aren't any godless homosexuals on the moon to make you uncomfortable as they try to buy a wedding cake.

Bullshit

[MrKaos]

These political announcements are so sad because every time there is talk about manned space exploration it doesn't go any further than the ISS, 450Kms up. I mean, isn't there more useful science 2000Kms up? and if we're not willing to face the challenges of a space station that high up, what real chance have we got of going back to the moon?

Consider this. Manned space programs have zero political capital past an issue of national prestige. However that sort of political capital has a limited life span so the reason to go back is to demonstrate industrial capability, the same way hitting Nagasaki with an atomic bomb after Hiroshima was to say "this was on purpose, and we can do it again if we want", the development of nuclear weapons continued, just like every other technology platform like aircraft, ships, computers, cars. How many times has the light globe been re-invented? Did people stop climbing Mt Everest because someone else had been there, done that.

NASA hasn't been back to the moon in 45 years of talking about it and the reasons haven't changed, not in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and the 20teens, the US hasn't demonstrated the industrial capacity to put a man on the moon because it can't do it any more or it won't do it anymore. This will go on until we all start believing that the whole thing was a hoax in the first place and the politicians can shift the discussion onto why we can't.

Not that I believe that the moon landings were a hoax but because I reason that whatever the astronauts found up there profoundly changes the nature of our reality as a species, otherwise all of this wouldn't be rated as higher than nuclear weapons in terms of secrecy and the US would have demonstrated her industrial capability so that the world knows it was deliberate.

You can flail your arms yelling conspiracy theorist all you damn please, I know when I am being lied to and my bullshit meter just goes crazy when I hear politicians talk about going back to the moon. Start removing National Security obligations and the threat of the death penalty for treason from NASA employees and we can talk about what is or isn't a conspiracy.

This is why I don't think the US will be sending men back to the moon anymore, ever. We can check back here in the next 2, 5, 10 years and see if I'm right.

Obamacare is a terrible idea

[rsilvergun]

it was a miserable compromise because the republicans controlled the legislature if you counted the 'blue-dog' Democrats who weren't really progressives.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Science and Fahrenheit? Eww...

[Anonymous Coward]

What are we? Savages?

The usual poly-ticks:

[Hartree]

The subject immediately became a flame war about the current administration. A similar thing happened here when the Obama administration announced their program of visiting an asteroid (or whatever, it morphed a few times).

Personally, I favor return to the moon for a number of reasons. Others prefer Mars or other programs.

That said my main preference is: Choose a mission. Stay with it for long enough to get it done. Fund the damn thing on a consistent basis.

If you do these, you will have a successful program. If you underfund chronically, change the mission requirements repeatedly and try to undermine the program because it's a "Democrat" or "Republican" program, I can nearly guarantee the program will fail.

Pence's speech smokescreen

[Anonymous Coward]

This focus on Moon exploration is primarily being put forward because tRump wants to defund and defocus NASA from climate measurement. NASA's work on climate measurement puts his fossil fuel agenda in jeopardy, and makes his denial of climate change look foolish.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

It had been done, people cheered at the time and morale went up, why do government keep procastinating solving actual more urgent problems?

New campaign slogan

[swilkers808]

Make the moon great again?

How?

[JohnFen]

How are we going to be able to afford it after the administration is done ruining the economy and making everyone poorer?

Vice President Pence Vows US Astronauts Will

[Anonymous Coward]

The occupants of the moon say otherwise. They warned us off 45 years ago. They said get off of here and stay off, just as you might say to your cat when she's jumped on the kitchen counter while you're preparing a meal. Pence is full of crap and he knows it. Same for Musk and Mars.

Do it now!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all in favor of giving everyone in the Trump administration a one-way ticket, but here's a little hint: Mars is much farther away! The moon is still a little too close for comfort...

Heard it befoe

[jwhyche]

I have been hearing this for years. Call me when they take off.

Time travel is real ...

[fahrbot-bot]

Vice President Pence Vows US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon

... and the Trump administration is taking us back to the 1960's - in many ways. Buckle up folks, it's going to get bumpy.

It's all about jobs and energy independence.

[fahrbot-bot]

Trump thinks there's coal on the Moon.

Re:It's all about jobs and energy independence.

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't there deuterium or another technically (once we have the tech to use it) vastly superior source of energy in the fundament of the moon?

Re:It's all about jobs and energy independence.

[Anonymous Coward]

isn't there deuterium or another technically (once we have the tech to use it) vastly superior source of energy in the fundament of the moon?

Maybe Helium-3 ?

it will be easy

[Some_Llama]

with current gen CGI technology you don't even need a sound stage.

Good idea

[Cro Magnon]

I'd like to send our politicians into space. They already have their heads in Uranus.

Believe it when I see it

[mu51c10rd]

Bush said we would replace the space shuttles, Obama said we would go to Mars, and now the current crop say we will return to the moon. Maybe they should fund NASA before making empty promises.

Pense is a moron

[Anonymous Coward]

What is there to discover on the moon? Maybe Pense can go and stay there forever.

We choose to go the moon...

[REden]

We choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because it is easy, because it is cheaper...and easier.

Once we go to the moon, we can store all our nuclear waste there... what can go wrong?

Why? Obvious!

[Anonymous Coward]

To get off this rock!

Sooner rather than later, the ability to destroy civilisation will be in the hands of a small group of nutbags. Said nutbags will use that ability and then we will have nothing.

We must colonise the galaxy to have any future as a species. Even then, the odds of avoiding the stupidarse AI killerbots developed by nutbags who remain on Earth is slim, but we should at least try...