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Name that probe! And 3 more years of duty for Mir
Cerb writes
"NASA seems to be
in need of a few good names for soil-penetrating probes
that they plan on launching Jan. 3rd." Unfortunately
the pair of people need to be related and dead, which
reduces means we can't name them Linus and Alan. In related
news,
humanity's only tried and tested space-station, which
was to be decomissioned this June, will get
a new lease of life: an anonymous international investor
will provide funds for another 3 years of service. (subject
to Russian Gov't approval)
Some comments say Salyut and Skylab were first. True, but they
aren't currently functionnal in Space.
... be S.R. Hadden, of Hadden Cybernetics? This would mean that we're not too far away from "Contact".
...
Paging Dr. Arroway
Hrm, the probes involve penetration.... ;)
Anyone know any dead porn stars?
"...the NASA probes Busty Dusty and Ron Jeremy have
penetrated and are now taking soil samples..."
Is the name used in the book. Of course, Hadden had many companies in the book, including a rather adult amusement park.
:)
Isn't it a bit churlish to point out errors in other people's postings
MIR is second.
Mir...
;-)
hehe, only kidding
USA USA USA USA
WE ARE THE BEST
WE DONT NEED A SPACE STATION
WE HAVE MCDONALDS SO THERE
look you self righteous shit for brains
long haired freaky looking smelly technocrat..
you dont name them after some elitist fucker
who built bombs all his life and treated people like shit
you name it after people who died because of careless
morons who put "whats new and cool" before human beings
name it after the russians and americans who died because
of those fucking bastards in the bureaucratic government
Sounds like something Ted Turner would do. As for naming the probes, why not Robert (Goddard) and Wernher (Von Braun). Either that or the husband/wife geologists that were killed at the pyroclastic flow at that volcano in Japan several years back.
I think the probe should be named after porn stars. After all, its all about penetration.
Moo!
Silly Americans, always thinking they are fist at everything :)
... Cletis! Or jimmy bo bob..
something nice and down to earth
JFK and RFK?
how about some americans....
I know they aren't related, but I think the names kinda fit.
They don't have to be blood relations, just have some kind of association together.
I know who the Anonymous Coward is that is funding the Mir.
This news actually came out just after we pissed off the Russians by bombing Iraq. It was announced at the time that Russia had recalled it's ambassadors to the US and Briton.
We desperately want Russia to abandon the Mir and help us with the ISS. They own the Mir and we can't push them around. Once the Mir is gone and there is only the ISS then we will be acting like we own the place.
I conclude that the "anonymous" source of funding is the Russian government! They are doing this anonymously because of contractual agreements with the US relating to their use of funds for space programs.
Either you are a very ignorant fuck or this is a troll. Anyway, Skylab was a complete and total failure. It was supposed to be in orbit longer than it was. The US couldn't get the additional rockets up there in time that were supposed to raise it to it's proper orbit. The whole thing was just a kludge anyway. You don't hear the US bragging about Skylab a whole lot and there is a reason. When the thing fell from the sky it was not because it's intended lifetime was over. It was because NASA is technologically behind the Russian Space Agency. This whole episode just proves that it takes much more than cash to build and maintain a space station. You also have to know what the hell you are doing!
Duh!
Actually I prefer Bonnie and Clyde.
If two people get married in Alabama, and divorced in California; are they still brother and sister?
Anyway I think the probes should be called Simon and Garfunkle. I like the name "Garfunkle." In fact I like the name "Garfunkle" so much that I am going to have my name legally changed. I want to change my name to Simon Garfunkle. Say "Garfunkle" over and over and over again and you too will learn to love this name.
Garfunkle Garfunkle Garfunkle Garfunkle!!!
This one is tough as they have to be related or married(?).
1) Moe and Curly (Howard) from the three stooges.
2) JFK and RFK
3) What the hell is the name of the Brits that won the Nobel prize for X-ray diffraction (father and son). Thompson?
4) Wright brothers
5) Curies and/or Joliets.
6) Bart and Homer. Okay, I'll add in Marg and Lisa so that I'm not accused of being a sexist. They are not technically dead or alive.
7) Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt (cousins, IIRC)
8) Those Roman dudes, Remos and what's his name?
Skylab did not fall down. Skylab did a controlled reentry into the Earth's atmosphere at some unplanned location (with it's nuclear reactor). No wait, Skylab was recycled. Skylab got to go home. Skylab was called back to it's maker.
I remember watching Skylab circle the Earth (in a very low orbit) back in 1979. You could actually see it zipping across the sky. There was some major concern about what would happen on it's reentry and breakup. IIRC, the Aussie's were the lucky winners of the space debris.
"Huh, huh, huh, he said 'probe'".
I don't think that'll fly with NASA.
The names should be
Harry S. Stamper
and
A.J. Frost
Bruce Willis and Ben Aflecks Characters from
Armageddon. They are after all the worlds finest
deep core drillers.
Skylab was not a total failure. You seem to think just because it fell to earth (as all low earth orbiting satellites eventually do) five and a half years after it was abandoned makes it a failure.
Was it supposed to be in orbit longer, yes. The planned orbit life was 8 to 10 years, it lasted only six due to unpredicted solar activity, which expanded the upper atmosphere and increased the drag on the station (and every other low-earth orbiting satellite).
As for Skylab's "indended life", that was over February 8th, 1974, when Skylab 4 (the third and last manned mission) landed. Skylab was NEVER intended to be used beyond the three manned missions. Skylab was launched with all of the air, water, and food needed to support a 30, 60, and 90 day mission. Nothing more.
There were a few pipe dreams in NASA to use it with the shuttle, but the this would be virtually impossible due to the diffences in the atmospheric systems in the two.
As far as "getting rockets up there" there was a desire to use the shuttle (if it would be available in time) to attach a rocket that would de-orbit the station in a controlled manner. Boosting it to save it opened the question: "Save it for what?"
As far as techology, America was not behind the Soviets. Behind in space station experience (Salyut 1 was launched in 1970), yes, but technology, not hardly. The soviets could not even hard dock two spacecraft and transfer people internally until Salyut, and the first three cosmonauts to visit Salut 1 died when they undocked due to a docking system failure that caused the air to leak out of their Soyuz spacecraft.
To this day Skylab is still the greatest source of Solar observation data. Until the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, Skylab's Apollo Telescope Mount was the largest observatory ever orbited. The Skylab 4 endurance record of 84 days lasted for over 10 years until a Salyut 6 crew broke it.
Failure, not hardly. Just what are they teaching you kids in school today?
linus and alan did that?!?! those bastards! oh, those bastards!! and they both seemed so nice!! the banality of evil strikes again!
name it after the russians and americans who died because of those fucking bastards in the bureaucratic government
so the names would be:
Alan's American Victims
Linus' Russian Victims
i can see the commentators: "Just in from JPL, Lunus' Russian Victims are approaching the blah blah blah . . . "
2. I wish I remembered the name of the 1st serious geologist
will Agassiz do? i doubt that he was the first, but he did a lot of pioneering work.
If two people get married in Alabama, and divorced in California; are they still brother and sister?
god, i wish i could stop laughing long enough to tell you what a mean and unfair joke that is . . . but i just can't stop laughing, dammit . . . i'm ashamed of myself, i really am . . .
Garfunkle Garfunkle Garfunkle! etc.
man, that's even better.
i think we should call them "Garfunkel" and "Garfunkle". it's a subtle difference, but that's okay; it makes people think.
wow, i'm saying it over and over and over and over and over and over. it's cool to say things over and over, after a while the effect is like hyperventilation but more disorienting. hey, i guess actual hyperventilation probably does play a role there, but it's more than that. we accept the link between sound and meaning on such a basic level, that when you pry the two apart it's like a minor failure of natural law or something. yer brane just can't deal with it. existential vertigo. very cool.
vertigo vertigo vertigo vertigo vertigo vertigo vertigo . . .
i dont see why not... but then the linux community would seen as some cind of cult or something... but on the griping hand; we could kill them, then freeze the two and later unfeeze them and all....
it could werk...
Oh god, don't tell me?
"Newly aquired, wholy owned subsiduaries, of...
Hadden Industries"
he hehe.. sorry couldnt resist....
0. You've to reach Mars first. I do not know whether you've heard of Earth II. The whole project finally failed but should be a good for what can go wrong. The scientific value of some corpses on Mars seems to be rather low to me.
Second reason to try the Moon first:: it would leave more money to solve actual, although less impressive, problems but that aside. Mars would be a political project, as Apollo was. Its short time value might be great, but in the long run I doubt it would be worth it. Not now and yet, that is.
I propose the names:
Watson and Crick
The two men who used X-ray crystallography to reveal the double-helix structure of DNA.
---
Michael Perkins
Decommissioning MIR isn't political the Station is over 11 years old it was designed to be in space for only a fr4action of that time. Its was made by Russians at the time when using the best construction materials was not available. If anything keeping up their is political. The ISS will escape pods that will be about to land safely on Earth. Another thing is that the Russian Government can't even keep their p[eople fed, by keeping MIR alive it just gives the people to rally behind something when the money could be used for more important items. It has served its mission well but its time to let it go.
As for Mars their is no easy way to get their without the ISS. The current plan for the MARs mission dicates that a refueling ship be sent to MARS and the Space craft that will carry passsengers will be built in space by the ISS. The designs I've seen in Air and Space show it to be extremely wierd looking ship that can't possible be made on Earth. $50 billion is nothing in our budget, the Sea Wolf attack Sub cost that and B-2 Stealth Bomber are just as expensive if not more.
Gumber sez:
Another guess on the anonymous international investor who offered to fund continued operation of Mir: Georgo Soros. I think most of his donations have been publicised (but then we wouldn't really know, would we), but I think Russia fits well into his general philanthropic focus.
Gumber sez:
What makes you so sure?
I am not particularly fond of BillG3, but you don't really provide much support for your bold assertions, do you.
Busty Dusty a porn star? I don't think so. A stripper & nude model, yes. A participant filmed penetration, no.
Gumber sez:
How many soviet cosmonauts died in the Russian Space program?
I propose that we name the probes after my former drill sergeants at Fort Jackson S. Carolina, Sgt. Ethridge and Sgt. Rhodes. I'm not sure if they are alive or not though.
Even if we could reach L1 with manned ships, we'd still build it in LEO to minimize the use of consumables (fuel, food, air, water, etc.) during the mission. (Why add several days of travel time each way when you're building it?)
Building it in LEO and then moving it to L1 would require huge fuel tanks. And then how are you going to get people back and forth to it? The farthest people have gone is the Moon, that's only 0.25 million miles, and we don't even have Saturn V's anymore.
In fact, they'd be greater if you're launching from L1, because you have to first boost all the people/raw material up to L1, bring it to a stop at L1, and then boost it back up to speed again when you launch the expedition. The most efficient thing is to launch directly from Earth (assuming that's where all your material is coming from); second best is to launch from low-Earth orbit so slowing your material into your launch orbit costs as little as possible. This changes if you start mining the Moon or asteroids for material.
Calvin and Hobbes?
How about Slick Willey and the Bitch?
They should be named after that Russian dog Laika who was the first person in space and Gagarin who later became the first human in space.
I would like to know how anyone plans on launching a shuttle or any other large projectile from the moon... no oxygen, means no ignition. You can't launch anything without oxygen and there simply isn't enough water on the moon for our needs, I say mars it is :)
Tux and Chuck I say.
yeah, they only reboot it for hardware maintenance.
heh.
Nixon and Agnew?
well, since we're only allowed to name then after dead people... *loads his .44*
POKEY AND MRNUTTY!!!
NASA and the universities did not finish going through all of the data until the early '80s (1982, I think). That is about eight years worth of data collected in less than a year of actual work. So in sheer depth of data, Skylab was the leader. Skylab also allowed the use of film, which at the time had much better resolution than the digital methods used today.
...are the perfect choice. Two robots carried aboad a satellite and thrown into the ground at 400+ mph by "scientists"? Sounds like Dr. F and the 'bots to me. Tom could even propel himself with his hoverskirt.
Alternatively, you could name them after significant people, but that's not a good idea. There are only 2 scenarios:
Probes fail, and the historical figures are connected with junk on Mars.
Probes succeed, and there are dozens/hundreds of eerily similar bowling ball landers, two of which are named for historical figures.
It'd be like naming tanks after states - there's just too many of 'em. (Tanks, not states.)
Tom 'n' Crow!
(Plus, of course, the Mars Polar Explorer could be named the Satellite of Love)
Plus, he'd insist that all the station's computers be upgraded to use Windows NT 2000(R)(C)(TM). But that'd probably do more damage to the station than that Progress did when it slammed into Spektr...
Given the choice between accepting BillG's money and decommissioning the station, I would hope the Russians would opt for the Big Slam-Dunk into the Pacific. Not that I wouldn't be sorry to see it go, but it's the principle of the thing, you understand.
Eric
--
Be who you are...and be it in style!
How could you forget John C Holmes?!?!
it seems to me that the way to keep folks in orbit
safe is to have more places in orbit that they can
flee to. Decommissioning MIR seems purely
political, if they can afford and practically keep
it operating after all.
The US is just looking to validate the
overly-expensive ISS. We would have been better
off spending the money on a Mars mission or
elsewise going where No One Has Gone Before, and
the dipshits at NASA know it. $50 billion is way
too much money for a simple space station.
Go MIR!
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Goodie, now we get emergency use for a while!
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Why, Lewis and Clark! They were the US's governmental explorers and cartographers.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I agree that decommissioning the MIR is a bad idea. Heck, it costs alot of money to get that amount of hardware into orbit. At the very least, the MIR's modules could be used as a subsidiary part of ISS or as a liferaft for the ISS.
Some may say that using the MIR modules would require significant reworking - true. It would also give us valuable experience in space construction. I'm also in favor of using spent main feul tanks from the shuttle to make section of usable material for station parts. We could use them as raw material for a factory in space.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Wells and Burroughs? Kule! Either one could be the digger. HEHEhehehe....
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
True. I was working for a large non-profit and Microsoft "donated" a whole pile of software. They gave them the software, but rather pointedly did not give them any updates. They had to pay for those retail. So Microsoft was able to write off the whole retail value of the software in question, which of course only cost them the actual expense of the media. And they aquired another customer...one who cannot afford the expense.
Can you say "drug pusher"?
What's funny...I actually DID suggest it, when the link showed up at CNN's website...it seemed appropriate, to me anyways. (Just as a side note--Lewis and Clark actually were surveying the new territory, so it really DOES fit. :)
Not sure on the 200th anniversary bit, but (oddly enough) the planned new US dollar coin will have Sacagawea on the reverse, which makes it cool in its own way too. :) Lewis and Clark for the little survey probes, and a strong woman on the money to pay for 'em [which is properly silver dollar sized this time :)]. :)
Now to see just HOW many other folks submit it... :)
Mir is not the first manned space station.
Look at Salyut or Skylab.
Both of them were up and running a decade before Mir.
It was in a degrading orbit and was forced down so that big film vault wouldn't kill someone.
It came down years after NASA was done with it.
Yes the Salyut were temporary things...so was Skylab. And someday people will say that Mir was a "temporary thing".
I really wonder if the ISS could survive the kind of impact that Mir took in that accident.
He was on a radio talk show in California a couple months back, I heard 'em. Hawking new 'n improved "toys".
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Wells and Burroughs - what a *brilliant* pair of
names for tunnelling probes!
But is there any evidence that NASA scientists have
a sense of humour?
The world has changed and we all have become metal men.
How about the first and last name of the English agrarian Jethro Tull who helped invent better ways of, ahem, digging fields.
what about lois and clark? the new adventures of superman?
Watched a show on sbs http://www.sbs.com.au about MIR and US involvement with sending up astronauts,and the response of the NASA flight engineers was that MIR was a marvel of technology, simple reliable and fixable. But balence that with the cost saving manual docking, irresponsible russian ground controllers. I wouldn't want to be stuck up there in a fire like they had :)
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I'm familiar w/ the story between the two, but aren't those also the names of the Romulan homeworld and it's sister planet in Star Trek?
Earn cash in your spare time! Blackmail your friends!
Adam and Eve...
think about it, just throwing those names together, would make it an historic smash!
just hope one of them doesn't stop working...
heehee
I hope MIR stays in use, it is a very good project, and i am sort of mad with the folks who are incharge of the international station, because i know that the "captain" of the ISS won't be a russian, even though some of the russian cosmonauts (is that spelt right?) have logged more space time, and have more experience than almost anybody else. Its sick how its international, but americans will be running the show.
Its true that america will be bearing the finiancial brunt of the station, but if they want to have control of it, they should not call it "international."
Don't play political games with science...
The end result will mean doom.
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Mir has been up for a lot longer than was originally intended. It is a fantastic piece of engineering but it's definately showing it's age a tad - remember the crash? and the fire? and the problems with the computers? and the power failures?
The ISS is an expensive solution but it is about time the old thing was retired.
----
Megs
---- Me
Megs
I can't think of any famous siblings except for the Wright Brothers, or the Curie's, but they were married.
oh well
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
It is, I saw Contact on HBO last night.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
They aren't related, but they're great scientists (especially Bohr) and would be good names for the probes, I dunno, we should probably use some explorer's name or some archaeologists or something like that due to the nature of the probes.
-Ben
bensmith@biz1.net
It spread far faster than any human could hope to, and destroyed those civilizations (70-90% fatalities, IIRC) long before the conquistadores got there. They just picked up the pieces.
And in the small favors department, at least the Catholics decided the natives were human and merely enslaved them. The Protestants up north decide they were devilspawn, and began a lowkey genocide campaign.
1. Cortez and Pizzaro, both of whom were in
search of precious metals.
2. I wish I remembered the name of the 1st serious
geologist. Name one after him, and the other after
the canal-obssessed astronomer.
(blanking out here... )
3. H.G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the
first folks to write Mars sci-fi novels?
'nuff said.
This may be a little off-topic, but I'd just like to point out that Mir is not an abbreviation. Translated from Russian, it simply means Peace.
---
I'm pretty sure it means peace.. :P
And yes, I'm aware of the language's grammar, I speak it fluently.
---
Probably you are confusing the cost of a single B-2 with the cost of actually developing the B-2.
I don't know the numbers so I can't tell.
Forgot to take your pills again, huh?
Hmm, but you could just as well take the parts up to a station in Earth orbit and assemble them there. It's zero g in orbit just as well as in a L1.
I'm not so sure.
--
... they don't exactly fit the bill.
:-)
Anyhoo, the two names that keep calling me are:
Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking
These two were/are definitely pioneers in certain fields of 'space science', so IMHO, they should be the names
Why must they be related anyway? Seems more fitting if both names came from the (relatively) same field of study.
-Dude, I flaked.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
What about Foster(?) Tyrell?
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
The big win in putting a base on the moon is getting the raw materials for space stations. The cost to move processed metals from the Moon to Earth orbit is tiny compared to the cost of launching out of Earth's gravity well. (Of course, you have to have the moonbase first, and that's non-trivial.)
Another advantage of Luna over Mars is that you're close enough to Earth for a lot of the work to be done using teleoperation (waldoes). You keep the balance of your workers down on earth, and have them remotely operate the machinery using TV links, robot arms, and etc. Mars is way too far away for this to be feasible: the time-lag on communications is too long.
Lastly, the Moonbase is close enough to Earth that the inevitable problems with getting a self-sustaining biosphere started can be helped out with shipments from Earth in a timely fashion.
I really don't see what a base on Mars gets you, besides a 50 billion dollar Martian trailer park. The moonbase will give you a real lasting advantage.
Jon
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
Wilbur and Orville.
Related and appropriate.
I think we should allow MIR to finally die its bloody death. If its kept up too much longer someone is bound to find themselves unexpectantely dead.
On a different note I think ISS should be placed at L1 instead of earth orbit. If you are unfamiliar with L1 it is a position 1 million miles away where the forces of gravity between the Earth and the Sun are balanced. This would be the perfect place to launch expeditions to anywhere in the Solar System. Just to get there we would have to develop special spacecraft. And if you can get a spaceship to launch off the Earth and then turn around and stop you can go anywhere in our Solar System...all that you would need would be more similar space stations.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Its not my theory. If you don't believe me do a short study on the Lagrange 1 point, its not an obscure topic by any means. In fact a few satellites are there right now. And if you weren't aware neither Mercury nor Venus is tangent to this position very often. It just goes to show the power of the Sun's gravitational field being that our bubble of power extends 1 million miles and the Sun's takes the other 92 million. This of course will still be true for Venus and Mercury. Take a simple comparison of Venus and the Moon for example: the Moon is 1/4 of a million miles away. The moon barely affects the Earth at all (you may say the tides are major but if you compare the mass of the oceans to the entire mass of the earth the affect of tides is barely anything at all). Now how is a planet that is 100 million miles away from L1 going to affect the satellite (recall that as the distance between two object doubles, the gravitational field quarters). Btw, those planets compromise less than 1/1,000,000th of the mass of the Sun. If those planets' movement causes a satellite to move even 1 mile per year I would be suprised.
In conclusion: No, neither Venus nor Mercury will have any considerable affect upon a space station at L1.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Hey man.. I think the Wright brothers are the right idea. No one believed in them until they flew. No one believes the Russians are going to keep MIR going unless someone pitches and helps. That's what the Linux community is all about, isn't it?. Helping other people out. Someone can't get the code done or is having problems. Someone else pitches in and helps out. That's what someone has done for the MIR. (I'm not sure I want to know who it was in this case, but I'm sure it was for a good cause) I'm sure the Wright brothers had their doubters, but some one backed them up and, guess what... they flew!
Of course.. If you want to be paranoid, just think what kind of damage a satellite would do to a city. Especially considering if it was loaded with anthrax. Hmmmm... Iraq? Anyone? Keep it in air for just a little bit longer to control where it lands, and bye bye major American city. (Just in time for the year 2K crisis when America doesn't have any capital to spend on it.)
"Mr. President -please don't forget about that."
(The sounds of major re-arming can be heard in the background)
I'm serious Mr President! If you fuck this one up *we* all go down with you, and I'm not sure you really want that, do you?
(sorry) off-topic post. preacherism. shoot me. I'll come back.
(I was only an egg, but then I cracked)
They're dead.... *giggle*
Pope Felix the Scurrilous.
Computer Geek by day, religious Icon by night.
Hmmm, just a wild speculation here.. If we killed Linus and Alan, would NASA allow us to use their names? :)
:) :) :)
Then again.. why kill gods when we could murder Bill Gates and pair him up with Satan? (They're related, aren't they?)
-- Microsoft is not the answer. Microsoft is the question. "No" is the answer.
How did Zubrin put it..."The moon is like a beautiful siren beckoning the unwary explorer toward her rocky shore". If you read up on it, that is a very accurate statement.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
...are not a theory. They exist.
Think of them as gravitational eddies where the gravity wells interact and produce a 'dead spot'. As for other planets, yes they do have an effect on the actual location of the Lagrange points, but they don't nullify them. The actual L points (theres more than one) tend to float around a bit as the gravity wells shift in relation to each other. Objects located in those points only require occasional thrusts to keep them centered in the phenomena.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
How about the Brontë sisters? Cain and Abel? Michael, Jackie, Marlon, Jermaine, Tito, LaToya and Janet Jackson? Click and Clack (Tom and Ray Magliozzi)? The Marx brothers -- Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Karl? The Hansons? Elayne, Galad, and Gawyn? The Everly Brothers? The Allman Brothers? The Chemical Brothers?
I could go on forever.
NASA's stated that the goal of this mission is to "follow the water", looking for water on the surface, subsurface, and polar regions of Mars. How about "Lewis" and "Clark"? (My U.S. history isn't up to snuff... what were their full names?)
The only thing I'm wondering is their human rights record... anybody going to object? (What was their relationship with Native Americans?)
How about those wonderful folks who gave us
Shoemaker/Levi-9, tragically killed while
searching for impact craters in Australia.
He was after all a member of NASA and USGS.
E Pluribus Computem
Unfortunately, the ice discovered on the moon is thinly dispersed through the soil, making it very difficult to extract. Add to that the energy expense of separating the oxygen and hydrogen (remember, when you recombine them you only get back what you put in to separate them, minus some pretty big efficiency losses) and the moon isn't terrific as a fueling base. It does, however, seem better than an orbital space station for many purposes, largely because you don't run the unnecesary risk of more flying crap.
:)
Perhaps someday if we set up a Skyhook, we can more efficiently lift material into orbit, from where they can be sent to the moon to be assembled and launched cheaply.
I don't see how a space station placed at a Lagrange point would help either. It isn't any easier to reach from earth. And if you launch from a station in Earth orbit instead, you get the benefit of easily using Earths gravity to accelerate.
Captain Garland and Prokhor Zakharov, for example.
They are related, Garland will be dead by March for sure and I kill Zakharov virtually every single day.