Slashdot Mirror
Plan for Privately-Funded Moon Base
Anonymous Coward writes "Check out The Artemis Project. A project to have a self-supporting moon base and commercial flights within a decade. According to the FAQ, the project will be paid for by 'shameless commercialism'." The project's leaders say their approach is nothing like D. D. Harriman's, but more along the lines of P.T. Barnum.
They should talk to maxis about licensing a
"Official Artemis Project SimMoonBase" game. And
promote it with a big sticker on the box that says that a portion of the profits are going to help actually setup a private enterprise moon base. I think this would be a big winner with geeks and sf fans and their business model would make a good sim game.
You get a big chunk of cash at the start from
broadcasting rights and the movie and merchandising have, then you have to find long
term revenue sources to keep the moonbase economical for 30 years or something. You can build luxury hotels for the tourists, moon themeparks, oxygen plants, hydroponics domes, magnetic acceleration cargo launchers etc Disasters would of course include depressurisation, meteorite strikes and workers going postal....
Also include details on the artemis project and the website address with the game, this would help raise awareness about them as well as raising some money for them.
but do you want to have to reboot your space ship halfway to the moon?
char *stupidsig = "this is my dumb sig";
In short, it was an almost complete failure. It is not just about water and food and transport, it is about all those nitty gritty problems no-one needs to think about on earth. Or does not, that is. Letting aside all psychological problems. If it is commercial the ones who can go are the ones who can pay, not the ones who are fit enough.
I think you mean Biosphere II. That was an scientific experiment on ecosystems, and as such was not a failure - it gave results, and the important result was that it's no way to run a moonbase.
:v)
The Lunar biological environment requires much more rigid control and totally different techniques to cope with lunar vaguarities such as the 336hr night and shortage of organic materials like dirt.
For a quick rundown on the issues, check out The Artemis Biological Recycling page or get a copy of the next Artemis Magazine.
Vik
Shouldn't that be "spelling checker"? Maybe you're a hoax? :)
:v)
Seriously though, do bear in mind that English is not the first language of all Artmis Society members, and it does take a lot of work to maintain a site that huge.
Vik
Mars actually has a pretty decent atmosphere. Only 10 millibars or so but that a lot more than the Moon. The atmosphere is made up of CO2 which is far from unusable. Scrounge up some H2 or bring it with you, react it with the CO2 to make all sorts of handy stuff, such as methane, oxygen, water. Mars' atmosphere also comes in handy for radiation shielding and aerobraking. Overall, Mars has much more to offer than the Moon. But it is a long trip....
Artemis has been around for a while. They have a very ambitious schedule that slips at the rate of one year per year. Their emphasis seems to be on getting space cadets excited, not actually doing anything.
I'm an environmentalist but concern for the Moon's "environment" borders on religous fanaticism.
No air, not water, no life, no environment. Nuke and pave for all I care.
Now Mars, we need to be a bit more respectful of, since it might have life of it's own. Same for Europa and maybe Titan.
Asteroids? Space equivalent of open pit mining. Knock yourselves out, grind em up.
It would really help if you could post a URL when you're attributing things to the Artemis Project.
Either there are errors on the Artemis Project web site that we need to fix, or we see a lot of folks making up things that don't bear any semblance to the Project.
With nearly 3,000 web documents on the Artemis Project web site, errors are likely; so we really appreciate the help.
On the other hand, if you're just making it up or quoting things out of context, I'd recommend investing your energy in a more constructive pursuits. You will find that creating things is much more personally rewarding.
Thanks!
Greg Bennett
President, Artemis Society International
Picture it: A far-off shot of the moon base, cuts to a close up of one of the satellite dishes. "Drink Coke", emblazoned vividly on the dish, competes with the "Reebok" emblem on the side of the lunar rover sitting next to it.
"That's one small step for a man, but thanks to my NikeBok MoonBoots (TM), one giant leap for mankind."
dave
Exhuberant Slashdot postings imply validity of pie-in-the sky new-age nonsense? I don't think so.
The 'volunteers' however enthusiastic they may be, are offensive to me, throwing time and money into someone else's half-rendered daydream.
Why knock it?
-because it's a waste of time and mental bandwidth (and potentially the savings) of anyone who gives it the time of day
What's (my?) motive?
-Encourage Critical (if not at times downright Cynical) thinking
What Will I gain?
-Satisfaction, in the hope that maybe just ONE person, as a result of my potentially offensive ramblings, will look at this 'Amazing Techno-color Gift Horse On The Moon Place Your Orders Now' a little more closely and a little more rationally, and NOT send in their hard-earned money and NOT waste their valuable time cranking out "serveral thousand web pages, data tables and images" for your organization. I'm a big fan of Heinlein and a big supporter of Space/Lunar research and exploration. Your 'project' as described on your site will foster neither of these.
(belch)
Excuse me.
**>>BELCH
Thanks, I think I can see where you're coming from. You're from the "it won't work because I say so" camp. It's a waste of time because you say so, it's not worth the money because you say so, and a lunar base won't help lunar exploration because you say so. All very scientific stuff I'm sure.
:v)
If you can actually come up with a good reason why it won't work - and do try to pick one that isn't answered in the FAQ - let us know.
Vik
It's not the pie in the sky dreamers who advance humanity... it's the type of dreamer who can come up with an idea, build it, and make it work, that really matter. And that's the biggest thing... it's real easy to give impractical plans on how to go to the moon (We'll shoot us out of a cannon! We'll mount a NASCAR on a SRB and use the sponsors to pay for it!), but it's a hard problem to make the dream a reality in a way that makes sense.
If someone can do that, they will have my utmost respect and admiration. But ASI is rather far from that point, despite the pretty pictures and lots of text on their site.
Judging by the rather amateurish website, I think this is a scam. This looks like the type of operation that will draw in a bunch of hoodwinked investors and then suddenly disappear.
I could be wrong (we'll see if they go public), but I'm not scheduling any vacation time in 2010 just yet, and my investments are staying with much safer tech startups (relatively speaking).
Who says you need to get the tourists back to earth? "Hey, honey, look over here: This way to the Egress. Let's go see that next!" ... whoosh...
And not gotten one step closer to the lunar surface.
Eventually we'll go back to the moon. But it won't be until access to space significantly cheapens and technology significantly improves.
The day that I look up and see that some enterprising guy has spotted mirrors over the lunar surface to spell out "buy Coca Cola" will be the day I .. well I'd better not say for legal reasons. But expect mess.
In all seriousness, who owns the moon?
No one. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prevents nations from making claims of soverignity on the Moon and other celestial bodies. Thus, those who claim to own part or all of the Moon are frauds: there is no government that recognizes their claims, no registrar of deeds with whom to file claims, and no court to arbitrate disputes.
(It should be noted that the U.S., and most other countries, rejected a far more restrictive treaty, the "Moon Treaty", in the late 1970s. This would have required any exploration and development of the Moon to serve "all mankind" and would have essentially made commercial development impossible. The treaty was not ratified by the U.S. Senate after a strong lobbying effort by the L-5 Society, a predecessor of the present-day National Space Society.)
That said, property rights in space is a thorny issue today, since many advocates of commercial development of space see the inability to claim recognized property rights on other bodies as a major hurdle. This will become a major issue down the road as commercial space efforts involving the Moon, asteroids, and other bodies ramp up.
I feel that i should bring this up..
There are a lot of resources to be had in our Sol system. The moon for example, is covered with patches of a mineral known as illmenite. This is a compound of titanium, iron, and oxygen. There is a lot of it. As well as aluminum, silicon, and other useful elements. The asteroid belt is another source of riches. According to "Mining the Sky" by John S Lewis, if all the minerals in the asteroid belt were mined and sold at todays prices, it would equate to about.. 500 billion for every person on earth. As well, it is theorized that two of Jupiter's Lagrange points may contain more material than the entire asteroid belt.
Essentially, we could give everybody their own mountain of platinum to sit on.. that is a rather strong reason for exploration and mining of our solar system.
This looks like someone grabbed the idea and started hypothesizing. For a group that plans to spend $30M on software development and $20M on sales and marketing you would think they might have invested a few thousand dollars in web site design. IMHO it's only a couple of steps above Transmeta's site as far as eye appeal.
--Kit
Former Inmate, VA Linux Sanitarium
" 3) completely pointless - if they tried to use the moon for population-control, like they did with the American West, they'd quickly find out that the moon does not have that much room... neither would have Mars, by the way."
:)
I haven't heard that anyone viewed the American West as population control, more like a whole bunch of people who didn't care for the stuffed shirts back east and wanted their own land came out here on their own -- then populated it like mad rabbits.
Also the issue has nothing to do with the size of Moon or Mars. Both have surface areas comparable to Earth's given the large percentage of water surface here. And we don't build *on* the Moon, we build *in* the moon, and that makes for a huge amount of room indeed, potentially.
But you are absolutely right that space in general is useless for population control, just as America was for Europe. You simply can't pack up and ship off as many people as are born each day, so it will never work for that.
It is *NOT* pointless however. First, sheer tourism -- rich people will pay a lot of money for exclusive vacations. Especially if rumors spread about sex in low gravity. Second, science will progress a lot from having more than one set of planetary data, and several observation points on the universe. Specialized enviroments like microgravity and cheap high vacuum labs also help. Third, it's great insurance for the human race to have independent colonies scattered about the solar system. Fourth, people with heart trouble, e.g., are likely to live a lot longer in low gravity. Fifth, though you can't control population, having those who hate the system most leave for space will reduce tensions. Sixth, its something those crazy humans *will* do, better get used to the idea.
I think you have that confused with Phoenix.
The fastest growing american city... go figger.
The whole world needs nanotech, mate :)
:v)
Yes it will make going to the moon much easier, but it can be done with current materials and equipment. The trick is not to use technology showcases like the Shuttle, to use real consumer-driven technology, and proven kit like Spacehabs and RL10 engines.
Now if nanotech comes along and gives us diamondoid tanks, engines, turbopumps and lunar processing machinery (no carbon, so we'll probably use aluminium oxide to build lunar nanotech) before the mission can get off the ground then you can guess who is going to be absolutely ready to take advantage of the new materials, right?
Personally I don't know which one is going to come first, but I'm not going to hang around and wait for someone else to do it.
Vik
[Chairman Structures & Mechanisms Ctte., Project Artemis] vik@asi.org
want this project to be enteraining in the spirit of PT Barnum, they should land the moon base on the same hollywood set that Tom Hanks used in HBO's "from the Earth to the Moon"
This is very true, however much some people refuse to see it. The day that country X lands a sizable number of colonists on the moon, arms them with nuclear weapons and then issues an announcement along the lines of "This sphere is now ours. Stay the hell off," well, that's that unless we want to go to war over it. Which I doubt. I have a feeling that one day we are going to discover this fundimental truth the hard way.
What was the name of that novel he wrote about this exact thing? "The Man Who Owned the Moon"?
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
The people who signed that treaty thought we were as likely to live on the moon as it were made of green cheese.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
...and then there were three
The same reason people go to the top of Mount Everest. Because it's there?
/L
Sure, it's a nifty idea, but does anybody really believe that it will happen?
I though the moon left Earth orbit last Monday (Sept 13th). I certainly haven't seen it since. Does anyone know for sure?
If you are interested in space habitats have a look at Oscar's Page. There are many good reasons for going into space...
Hasn't Artemis been around for absolutely AGES now? I have a feeling that I read about it in a forum somewhere on Slashdot....
Having said that, when it started it did look rather 'Pie in the Sky', but these days they are looking in a much more credible position!
this place has a lot to work out. they don't say anything about having help from nasa (which scares the crap out of me) or of what their infrastructure will be. as i looked through the site i notice things like 'space control', 'fusion power on the moon', and 'luna for the disabled'. yet a look into the links for infrastructure reveal a blank page. i'm not a tree hugger or anything but i'd like to be reassured that they aren't going to build a landfill on the dark side of the moon or jetison all their trash into space. as it is, what will saftey be like? laws? no one has soverign control of the moon, therefore the a private lunar colony will be much like the internet, built on good intentions but ultimately ungovernable and a relatively dangerous place to live. i don't think that i would want to go somewhere where there is no true way to stop someone from destroying an air-processing factory. i think that artimis has a lot of thinking to do, and i wouldn't expect for this to take off for closer to 50 years than their anticipated 10. america went to the moon in under 10 years but were we prepared to colonize in that amount of time? no. do we have a vehicle (aside from the saturn v, which are no longer manufactured) that is capable of reaching the moon and returning? no. it's taken us close to 30 years to come up with a feesable *idea* on how to colonize something like mars. this colony is for scientists, nasa isn't even worrying about the commercial possibilities. scientists will wear the same clothes for 3 months and live in a room the size of a phone booth, will workers and colonists? probably not. i'm afraid that if this happens in their projected 10 years, we will be hearing within a year that the project will be evacuated or that all of the colonists are dead due to some 'unanticipated problems'. i don't mean to seem pessimistic, but, well, there it is...
...so just fake it like last time!
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
Once removed from an environment trash ceases to become "trash" and becomes a rather irrelevant mass of organic material.
"ownership" in international politics is really entirely a concept of what can be defended (through numerous means, military, economic, or diplomatic) well enough that taking it would be more expense than it's worth. For example, in current world politics, gaining land through warfare is frowned upon by the big boys, who are willing to uphold this frowning with big bombs in some circumstances. But it's still a matter of what can be taken. "Ownership" in international politics is a null word. So what this all means is, since nobody's defending the moon, it's public domain until someone lands there and sets up a base. It'll probably be relatively easy to defend a moon base at first, since there'll be no space problem for a very long time, and attacking a moon base would be expensive and worthless. By the time space becomes an issue, you can be certain there will be groups with large strong claims staked out.
Of course, if the moon base is not self-sufficent, that changes things. It could be "attacked" by shutting down its Earth supply lines. So it's all up in the air.
I don't know why I'm even bothering to think about this, except that it's 10:42am. Moon bases are not interesting to me unless they have better net links than I do. And even with the best tech that can exist in _theory_ currently, there'll always be a really bad RTT. So I don't find moon bases interesting at all. So I'll shut up now.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I sincerely don't think that it will work this way.
:)
Corporations/individuals can invest large sums of money in obscure projects, but these tend to be down to earth ones ('scuse the pun) and often promise a return sooner rather than later, and in hard currency, not scientific/engineering advances. Wether we like it or not, space exploration doesn't fit this description well.
The peak of humanity's space exploration was a period of a paranoid cold war. This is no coincidence - the goverments then could afford to spend large amounts of cash on projects that people knew would not improve their life significantly, at least in the short term, and not risk public anger. Today, this is not the case. I don't think I have to proove this.
I believe that today, the moon landings wouldn't happen, because they cost wouldn't be justified. That, or some environmentalists would claim that the project didn't take sufficient measures to ensure no distruption of the moon would occur. Or some other group would come up and cause trouble. You know what I mean
Please, don't misunderstand me - I'm all for science, but in the last decade or so, it became much harder for governments to spend money on projects that don't yield obvious benefits for the taxpayers. That, and they lost interest. The same applies for other research; it's hard today to get a grant on research that will not yield results in 2-3 years that would be of interest to the industry. This is really sad, and hurts science, but it's sadly true. History teaches us that significant discoveries were made years (some times thousands of years actually) before a practical application was found.
There is no such thing as justification for doing science - this notion is obsurd. However, when it comes to someone funding a project, he'd better know that something's good gonna come out of it. Almost noone is willing to give something for nothing, and that's just capitalism's ugly side. We have to live with it - no system is perfect unfortunately.
If sufficient money are collected for this project, or other projects that might choose this way of funding, that's good. I, however, doubt that it will.
What we need is another Isabella crazy enough to sell her crown jewels and fund another Colombus' insane project.
-W
The answer is quite simple:
:)
Amount of material required to 'bootstrap' a base (initial domes, regolith mining, oxygen generation, hydroponics, metal smelting, etc.), plus the amount of food, water, and non-native gases that would need to be shipped until the base was self-sufficent...
...multiplied by the launch cost per pound. What is that sitting at right now? A thousand dollars, more?
Its prohibitively expensive. Too expensive for the US Government, too expensive for a group of corporations... certainly too damn expensive for a private organisation.
Now, if Artemis was serious, they'd start getting money poured into a cheap, high-capacity launch system... a rail launcher, for example. Once LEO travel is down under $100/pound, corporations and organisations are going to be tripping over themselves to colonise the moon.
That will be the point where the government starts passing inane laws trying to stop it or maintain control over it... ah well. "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by R.A.Heinlein is a good read for _that_.
(slightly annoyed hat on)
You know, it seems to me that these days ANY attempt to be humourous on the all-holy Slashdot is met with negativity (and downward moderation). This isn't just my posts; I'm seeing it all around. It's really a shame. I don't think it's the flaming kiddies that are taking away from Slashdot; it's the egomaniacal, something stuffed-very-far-up-their-asses pious better-than-everyone-else folks with moderation access these days. And I wonder why some of my favourite posters aren't posting nearly as much anymore. I don't think I'll be posting again for awhile.
Whoever funds this adventure, whether privately or NASA gets off it's collective ass, it's got to be good for humanity. Remember the effect the first moon landing and Apollo 13 had on the world. Suddenly, all borders, boundries and ethic differences were lost. An endevour like this might be the tonic needed to get people's mind on something other than killing each other. But, on the other hand, maybe I'm too much of an optimist.
no atmosphere
no light pollution
no radio pollution (or lots less, anyway)
no seismic activity
and lots easier to troubleshoot than equipment in orbit.
This might be a good way to make money off of moon property - build a big observatory on the far side, and sell observation time and data... (In fact, I think NASA has had plans for a while for just such an observatory.)
I have absolutly no problem putting up a Microsoft billboard on the moon if somebody sends me there to do it. (And you know it will say "Where do you want to go today?")
2000 years ago people ran around in loin cloths and threw spears at each other. Today we run around in designer loin cloths and throw small high caliber spears at each other. 200 years ago (ish) we burned or hung people because we suspected they were witches. Last week in Africa 6 (or was it 8?) people were killed because they were suspected of being witches. And 30-40 years ago we of the greatest nation on earth decided we should 'give' blacks and women equal rights, and we won't look at how that is today out of redundency. Should have happened a long time ago... Silly humans. I eagerly await the day you discover that you are just happless PAWNS in my game! Except for that anon. coward who discovered my secret set for the apollo moon landings. I shall have to have him removed...
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
Does Mister Bigelow any bear any relation to Bob Stupak?
How long 'til we have a Tower of Death on The Moon(TM)?
Can't wait!
**>>BELCH
How can we judge that sort of thing at our age (as a species) ?! Just because there are no trees or lakes or mammals on the moon doesn't mean that it can't be destroyed through human exploitation! Do we really have the knowledge to judge what the effects might be ?
I am among those who enjoys looking up at the stars and seeing a realm that is mostly untouched. There are no flashing Coca Cola signs, no unnatural disfigurations to the beauty of the moon... it looks empty, uninhabitated, wild and beautiful... I am not keen on having this change...
It was mentioned that there are no political claims to the moon yet.. ie. no one owns it... what will happen to that ? Will it be destroyed by greedy mining corporations that have no regulations to follow ? Will it be disfigured with uneccesary moon colonies and bases ?
I think that for once we should pay attention to what history has taught... doing things for pure entertainment and fun is OFTEN a temporary and ultimately disastrous reason... think of all the brief fashion crazes that have endangered various species of animals ... At the time it seemed harmless ... the true, long-lasting effects were only to be regretted later.
Let's leave the moon be. We have NO NEED to colonise it. (If Earth becomes uninhabitable, it's our own fault. We shouldn't use that as an excuse to ruin another part of our Solar System.)
---
I hope you're not pretending to be evil while secretly being good. That would be dishonest.
Better to have commercial interests controlling the moon than government interests.
At least with a corporation, you know what their motivation is (money). With the government, who knows what their after? Is the new funding for space exploration part of a deal that will end up censoring the 'net?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Without an evil death-ray pointed at Earth.
You know the saying "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"?
Well, the earth is a small, and very fragile basket.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Back when america might as well have been the moon, there were a few people who visited it, and they were all doing to to look for a profit. If there isn't profit in it, it won't get far. Once they found a way to make profit here, the occasional trip ballooned into colonies and settlements and cities and revolution against the mainland (england)--and political freedom for some and oppression for others and all because there was a buck to be made. Whether or not that is good, until there is a buck to be made in space it will just be an expensive place to visit occasionally "just for the hell of it." Bring on the capitalists!
Making the moon base self sufficient would be a trivial problem. There are oxygen supplies in the "soil", and you could get electricity from the sun. With electricity and oxygen, everything else can be generated.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
>> 3) The lunar colony won't succeed until people have a good reason to leave Earth (i.e. escape a big brother government). Right now, I don't think we have that sort of intolerable situation.
This strikes me as highly infeasible. It would take a tremendous amount of resources (money and power) to mount a lunar colony effort, and anyone or group with that much money and power is highly unlikely to be an "out" group politically.
Whether this turns out well or not, this is an incredibly nifty idea. Colonization of the moon would never happen if it were up to NASA, but a commercial undertaking will probably have the flexibility and funding to do it.
I would definitely love to go.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Anyone remember this from the simpsons? The video shown to Lisa's class foreshadows this sort of thing happening. Commercial resorts on the moon.
It was a good episode..
...
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
3) The lunar colony won't succeed until people have a good reason to leave Earth (i.e. escape a big brother government). Right now, I don't think we have that sort of intolerable situation.
I'm sure that even on the moon the liberals will want to take my DeathRay 2100 assault rifle away from me.
Private corporations have always had the best minds and talent. Why? Because they pay BIG bucks to get them. There are some talented and intelligent government employees, but not nearly as many as there are in the private sector. If you pay them (lots o' cash), they will come.
Thomas Reasoner
A thing is justified by the "thing in itself".
In aircraft design you will find that there are not too many opportunities to trade weight for safety. Naturally the extent to which you can make these sacrifices will vary depending on the aircraft type be it general aviation, commercial airliners, military etc.
Cheers,
Ed
p.s your last comment applies as much to aircraft design as it does to aerospace design.
Not to confuse you with facts, but since you asked about this passage from an article I wrote for the Artemis Data Book ...
Actually, it's much worse.
The original analysis was done in 1994 by Marianne Dyson, who is a director of the National Space Society and a former Shuttle flight controller. Marianne catalogued the entire NASA organization and its budget from bottom to top, identifying where the money goes.
Marianne's numbers are born out to a certain degree by my personal experience. When I was Manager for EVA Assembly and Maintenance Development on the International Space Station Program at the Johnson Space Center, I ran a time log on my organization for six weeks. On the average, the engineers spent 36 hours a week attending meetings that added no value to the program, preparing for those meetings, and working action items that would not have been assigned if the meeting had not been held.
So at least during that period, 90% of the cost of employing those engineers was consumed by NASA's management-by-meetings philosophy. We can safely extrapolate that observation to all agencies of the United States federal government, or at least to those with which I am familiar. They all use the same management-by-meetings philosophy.
However, this is only what happens to the money after it gets to the contractor who is doing the real work. There's a lot more to it than this.
It does not account for the fact that more than 50% of the budget for the International Space Station program gets bled off before it ever gets to the contractor, or to the fact that just over 50% of the remaining funds go to pay the contractor's overhead. Now we're down to 25% of the funds going to development activities, and that's where my time log starts in.
Those activities include a huge percentage of the development funds being expended analyzing and complying with NASA specifications. On the surface, NASA spec isn't too bad, though rigorous, unthinking compliance with NASA spec leads to some amusing anecdotes.
One of my favorites is the air circulation fans that blow air continuously past the smoke detectors in the ISS. These are standard muffin fans, like the one that's cooling your computer right now. Simple enough, but NASA spec requires that those fans be able to operate in a vacuum. (You read it right: a fan that must be able to operate in a vacuum.) As a result of that requirement, the fans had to built and tested by hand, one at a time, at a cost to the taxpayers of $200,000 per fan.
Another personal favorite is the paper trail. Show me a piece of metal anywhere on the ISS, no matter what it does, and I can show you a paper trail that leads back to the mountain from which the original ore was mined, in which mine shaft, on what day, on which shift. I kid you not.
When I first moved to the Johnson Space Center, after 7 years in commercial airplane development, I was appalled at the time-wasting activities built into the way NASA does business. I spent 20 years at NASA trying to change these things, with some small success. The rest -- the specifications, the bureaucracy, the lack of trust in business relationships, the lack of empowerment to make decisions -- is indeed inherent to government activities. Documents decrying the incredible cost of government programs show up throughout recorded history, from JFK's consternation with the cost of the Apollo program all the way back to Hammurabi some 5000 years ago.
So we can only conclude that there's really not much we can do about the cost of doing business as government. Sorry; at least in this case, the wishful thinking is on the other side of the telescope.
Life is short. Enjoy the adventure!
Greg Bennett
President, Artemis Society International
If you can actually come up with a good reason why it won't work - and do try to pick one that isn't answered in the FAQ - let us know.
Aw shucks. You got me there. I can't think of ANY...
My check is in the mail!
**>>BELCH
The decade is a working schedule, not a worshiped schedule. With people of sufficient independent means like Robert Bigelow entering the arena, doubts about private investors begin to fade. Eventually one or more big players will back this idea all the way and they'll make a killing - with or without Artemis. Preferably with - easier for both camps :)
:v)
Artemis could do it all by itself by following its current program of re-investment and collaboration (the "lemonade stand" philosophy), but it is unlikely that investors will stay away for that long!
Vik
If you're quoting from what I think you're quoting, you'll find the author was Greg Bennett. I believe that around that time he was working for Boeing as a NASA contractor, and so eminently placed to comment on the matter.
:v)
But you need evidence that private enterprise does it cheaper and better. So, who has the most advanced graphite-epoxy fuel tanks in the world? The best rocket engines in the world? The best vertical-landing rocket technology? Aerial cryo-propellant transfer? The best high-performance, non-toxic propellants? Modular, flight-tested space habitat components? Not NASA, private enterprises. If you want more evidence, just stick your nose into the aerospace world and look around.
But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that the US Govt. doesn't do things the cheap way. NASA is a US government technology showcase, not an inter-planetary transport company.
Vik
Some of those prints were digitally generated art; you can take it from the artist :)
:v)
They've done a lot more than that. The software used to join the members of the project from all over the globe did itself turn into a marketable product called Website Director. There is now a proper Artemis magazine, full of stories and articles about the moon. The Artemis Database has grown to a point where I understand it is now actually linked to by NASA. Plus there's this little company called TransOrbital about which you will hear much more.
Artemis has gone beyond the point where people can glibly say "it can't be done" or "you'll never get the money because everyone thinks like me." We now know it can be done, we've got the know-how, and we're steadily putting it into action.
So what Artemis has done is to show people that it can be done. To inspire people to think outside the little square that is government-funded exploration and realise that more and more, people will be able to decide the direction of their own future.
Mine is in the direction of the stars, and instead of bitching about it liek I used to I'm just making it happen.
Vik
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Well, hence the "if", but I'd argue that it isn't completely trivial. Sure, you can probably get oxygen and water and food, but that isn't all you need. What about machinery? Stuff breaks. Either you have factories capable of producing every single piece of equipment you use, or you have to import. This includes everything from walls to computers to rockets to cars... to parts required by the factories that build the parts. Making a fully self-sufficient colony in a hostile atmosphere is never an easy task.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Well, they did that on Apollo 13, and they made it back all right... :-)
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Oh my God. There's no ozone layer!! You guys have only been here 2 weeks and you've already destroyed it. Oh, wait. There never was one.
The moon is responsible for tides on earth and many other things that would severly hamper our ability to survive if it were tampered with too much (I would guess that all nine planets ultimately have an effect on each other, though perhaps miniscule). While landfills on the moon would not affect this, if there is no policy in place of trying to protect the moon from abuse, whats to stop some private company from testing a new missle and blowing it up? Also, we only have one moon and it would be a shame to destroy its surface with garbage, only to later find some other purpose for it (like, fleeing from the earth due to nuclear war).
Respect for the environment should always come first no matter what object in the universe we are dealing with...assuming everything is just "ours" indicates shallow instant-gratification-oriented thinking.
I find it interesting that they make the assumption that 90% of all funding for space projects goes to "overhead". I think that, in general, that figure is too large. I'd also imagine that as soon as a private corporation started to dabble in the space arena, there'd be all sorts of regulation applied (and you think the aerospace industry is regulated ...)
James
Unfortunately, not since JFK has the U.S. had a leader with the vision, the intelligence, the rhetorical ability, and the chutzpah to ram through a $1 trillion (in today's terms) manned moon project.
Keep in mind that American politicans were not necessarilty more visionary 40 years ago. They were more strongly motivated by the threat -- real or perceived -- posed by the Soviet Union, and were willing to spend vast sums of money (although far less than the $1 trillion claimed above) to demonstrate American technological superiority.
As such a set of circumstances is unlikely to arise again in the foreseeable future, commercial endeavors will have to play a larger role in the exploration and development of space in the future. Artemis may not be the most feasible way to acomplish this, but it is not the only way either.
I'm not sure, but I think the story was wrong on the treaty part. If I recall, about 5 or 6 years ago, a group of legal experts at the request of a number of governements and various other organizations. They finaly result was that when you plant your flag on unclaimed land, you own all teritory untill a significant seperating terran feature, (which they defined). Now, the it turns out that there's no such defining feature cutting of any portion of the moon. Hence, it's one big peice of U.S. Federal property.
I'm amazed that (at least as of the time I last hit reload) nobody has mentioned the thing that will really make space profitable. It isn't advertising and tourism. It's manufacturing and mining. There things that just can't be made on Earth that can be made in free fall (in Earth orbit). The problem with making stuff in Earth orbit is getting raw materials up the gravity well. If you make things in lunar orbit, and get raw materials from the moon, it gets around most of this problem. There are some other advantages to making some things in space/on the moon. You get all the vacuum you want, and near-absolute-zero temperatures. Vacuum and very low temperatures are expensive to maintain on Earth. And lastly, there's no environment to damage. You can dump all the toxic waste to want, and it can't hurt anyone.
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If you think NASA is too concerned with PR and politics, having a commercial organization take their place is only going to make things worse. Business is all about PR and politics. At least NASA has thousands of talented people working for them, whereas this place would be lucky to get a half dozen.
Remember, right now they have no product. In fact they'll probably have no product for many years to come. They say they're in no hurry and will wait for the technology needed. That's fine. The technology and the little details will be worked out as things go along. Right now they need the money which is why they ask you to join.
Ask yourselves this, though. How many companies are formed at this stage, but never make it to the "delivering the product" stage?
It needs money.
It needs well thought out details.
It needs a product.
It's vaporware.
Stephen
Still... It would be nice...
Artemis is not the only effort devoted to going to the Moon and making money, although their plan is arguably the boldest. Some other companies with lunar projects:
These and some other commercial lunar projects were discussed at the first Commercial Lunar Base Symposium in Houston in July. This article has some more details about the conference. Those in the Los Angeles area might want to check out the Space Frontier Conference, Sept. 23-26, where commercial lunar efforts will be one of the topics.
Picture it: A far-off shot of the moon base, cuts to a close up of one of the satellite dishes. "Drink Coke", emblazoned vividly on the dish, competes with the "Reebok" emblem on the side of the lunar rover sitting next to it.
WOO!!
Sigh...
So the best excuse we can come up with for space exploration in this day and age is brand marketing?
Just planting a flag does NOT make the land your territory if you've already signed a treaty agreeing not to claim it. The USA made just such a commitment when they signed the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
/peter
Who owns Antarctica? It's the same thing. The Antarctic Treaty guarantees that no country will claim it.
There's a good summary of the Outer Space Treaty at wisc.edu
The full text of the treaty is available here
To go where not so many humans has gone before.
look at the Artemis-Page
a huge radio telescope on the back-side of the moon would be great. it would be shielded against all stupid earthling-radiowaves and would have no distorting atmosphere above it.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
No, this may be the only way to FUND a mission to the moon or mars. It may not be the best way it may be the only way, especially considering if/when NASA finishes the International Space Station, Congress may not want to hear about any other big ticket projects for a long time.
The Moon is certainly a worthwhile challange.
:-)
If nanotech works out in accordance with current "schedules" (using the word very loosely), you'll see me working hard to get off the planet too.
It's a pity that the Moon doesn't have the same romantic attraction as Mars though. On the other hand, it's far better placed w.r.to the Earth. You're probably laying the foundations for the most important gateway in the solar system. Good luck!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
or Pax Bharathia (Indian) where space is controled by a democratic power that is not hypocritical.
what were the two countries to vote AGAINST the Treaty of Rome two summers ago, where the International Court for Human Rights was established - Libya and US
which country are YOU most comfortable with?
Grrr. my nick is "Forward the Light Brigade"...
There's a compelling argument for preferring private funding for space development. If we do it as free enterprise, it means people are earning a living doing it. If people are earning a living from it, they will keep on doing it, forever.
This frees us from programs that start and stop due to the changing winds of politics. It frees us from waiting for the Second Coming of Apollo that will never arrive. It insulates the program from political graft. It means all the money spent on the program came from people who gladly spent their money on things they were willing to pay for.
It takes a lot longer to build a solid financial infrastructure -- we have to create a new industry. But by doing so, we create an enduring program that creates a bright future for endless generations to come.
Greg Bennett
President, Artemis Society International
(Who is still wondering if he'll ever receive his slashdot password.)
Way down this thread, someone commented that the Artemis Project was no closer to the moon after all these years.
What criteria would we apply to indicate that we're closer to the moon? The growth of the supporting business infrastructure? The volume of research, development, and program planning we've done? The amount of publicly posted information? The number of people participating in the Artemis Project? The number of companies involved? The increase in fidelity and detail in planning the reference mission?
All of those indicate we are much closer to the moon than we were when the Artemis Project became known publicly more than five years ago. The program continues to grow in every area, each day another step closer to the moon.
If that's still not enough, perhaps we could issue ladders to every member of Artemis Society International. We could get a heck of a volume discount. Then everyone could climb up on the ladder as the moon passes overhead and proclaim, "Hey! I'm closer to the moon!" Would that do it, or is there some other elusive criterion one might apply to being closer to the moon?
Greg Bennett
President, Artemis Society International
Jamestown was funded by a corporation since, at the time, there weren't many people in England who had the money to finance a colony by themselves. And Jamestown certainly had its share of problems. The managers of the corporation stayed in England to run things while the colonists came to Virginia (just like point 1). Does the rule in absentia have anything to do with their troubles? Hard to say. It's a good possibility, at least.
The founders of Plymouth, on the other hand, were able to ensure that their corporation's managers (and their charter) came with them to the New World. So they were able to prevent (for the most part) interference from England.
belette
Hmmm... is there a Moon Quake, with 1/6th Earth gravity? Less injury from high falls, except for the greatly increased damage from everyone shooting at you during that extra time in the air...
OK, so when they establish their colony they should require that the managers/board members live in it...
Quite frankly, that would scare me. Aircraft are generally safe enough for what aircraft do...fly around in earth's atmosphere. But a trip to the moon will put a craft through much worse stresses. I hope they build the craft to much higher standards than a typical airplane.
I think that a desire to 'be an astronaut' or travel into space is a common geek trait, and I'm no different, but if all I can count on is the same safety margin as an airplane, I think I'll stay here on earth.
Ender
This sig is under construction...
Nothing to see here
Um.../WHY/ do we want to go to the moon and all?? Is there any practical reason? I don't understand this. Why would anyone want to pay to live in a bubble in the middle of a freezing desert (on one side, and the other a boiling desert) with no atmosphere and a life span of a few seconds after exposure???
-stumped
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The fact of the matter is you wouldn't be able to afford to not recycle. Everything you have on the moon you either transported up from Earth (expensive, fuel) or you mined+manufactured on the moon (also expensive, time consuming, some things just not possible due to lack of resources).
So any self-sustaining (i.e. not just an Apollo mission) moon-base will by necessity be very frugal with its 'trash'.
The reality is that there is so much polution, at-capacity landfills, etc. in the U.S. because we are too damn rich for our own goods. We've lost all sense of the value of things. You've heard the term 'disposable culture', well its really true. It doesn't have to be this way of course - we could be that much richer by recycling, and not wasting stuff (one of these days you should weigh all your grocery bags and then unpack all the food and weigh the packaging, wrapping, etc. and figure out what the percentage of waste to food is).
One of these centuries we (humanity) are really going to regret wasting all those hydrocarbons on fueling Suburban Utility Vehicles (which lets face it are nothing more than fancied up minivans).
Humans are idiots, they dont deserve to live.
So start by killing your self then. Think locally!
Artemis is primarily the goddess of hunting (ESR's Geeks with Guns might be modern equivalents to this Chick with Bows...).
/.ing to all.
The real goddess of the moon is Selene (look out for "Selenium" in Medeleiev's table). Pale, thin woman with long black hair - the contrary of healthy, athletic Artemis.
However it is true that those two goddesses have often been confused, even in antiquity. This may come from the former identification of her brother Apollon (god of light, sports and music, among others) with Helios (god of the Sun - ever noticed all those sun-related words that begin with "helio" ?), although those two guys are also different gods with different genealogies and all that.
This may explain why those stupid Romans, when they adopted greek mythology, mixed both Artemis and Selene into one single woman - known as Diana, goddess of hunting and of the moon.
BTW, ever wondered where the word "Dianetics" comes from ?...
Try to guess what they're hunting after !
Thomas
Happy
PS: If you're a student of French or any other latin language, mythology can be quite a funny way to improve your vocabulary : many Greek gods - and nearly all Roman gods - have names that can be found in many words of these languages.
My favorite episode. I liked the robot daughters of that farmer the best though.
Good is never enough, when you dream of being great!
I for one seriously doubt that we will be going back to the moon anytime soon.. We as a species just don't seem to want to. Sure there are one or two of us that have a keen interest in it and some would drop everything and leave in a hot second! But the vast majority of people just don't get it.. They think that the only reason to leave this planet would be for money or something.. They have no desire to reach out further than their television remotes. In the late 60's when Apollo was on track, the US Air Force had plans for a moon base. It have been pretty big, and fully funtioning by 1976! What actually happened? Well, after Apollo 11 everyone CHANGED THE F**KING TV Channel! "Apollo 17??? You mean we did it again? Why?" We were so damned stupid that Apollo 18's Saturn V is laid out in front of the Johnson Space Center in Houston! A fully man-rated moon rocket that just needed to be fueled and launched sits rusting! Apollo 19 sits in front of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida! Why? Because no one could be bothered to even care! Let alone pay for it.. I mean, damn people! We were just getting good at it when we quit! Now we have a fully political space program that is using our supposed space station project (now the "international" space station) to fund the former Soviet aerospace industry! That is irony folks! US tax dollars going to the same people who build SS-22 nuclear missles and MiG-29 jets! We HAD a space station! A good space station! We built it out of SPARE PARTS from the Apollo program !! (it was going to be Apollo 20, but that didn't happen obviously). What did we do with our fully funtioning (larger than Mir BTW) space station? Well, we were so busy pouring money into the "Space Plane" project that would become the abortion that is the Space Shuttle that we didn't have any way of getting people, spare parts or even fuel to it.. So it fell into the ocean and scattered over Australia too.. Sorry guys to drop that thing on you, but we are so stupid we can't even put more gas into it! So, to close: We spent tons of money, put more effort into the project than the Manhatten project to get to the moon.. Then we left. Will we return? Not today.. Remember one thing folks: The Vikings discovered the Americas first.. but we barely remember them.. It is only when you go and STAY that you are remembered.. anything else is just masturbation. --] Crow ps- will it take US 900 years to return to the moon? It took Europe that long with America.
Own the moon? Man, think of the land tax on that!
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
For anyone that would like to discuss the subject of Moon bases or the Artemis Society, Members of the Artemis Society maintain a channel on IRC for open discution of the topics relevant to what we want to do. The channel is #Artemis on irc.superlink.net generally you can find a few of us there most of the time. We welcome all those who would care to join us.
David Wetnight
12 men have walked on the Moon.
When do you get to go?
Just curious, what have you got against the project? Those images aren't exactly the best eye-candy on the site, and they aren't even to do with the moonbase. Couldn't you find something more representative?
:v)
People interested in nice pictures should look at the decent stuff, conveniently packaged for Mac & Windows users (Unix users generally being smart enough to figure out the image conversion themselves):
http://www.asi.org/adb/06/09/0 5/image-downloads.html
There are even better images on my website. I create these images to help the engineers envisage their work; it's actually a great assistance to the design phase.
Vik
NASA is completely unable to get funding to initiate (or follow through) on this sort of project, period. TYhe only way this could _ever_ happen is if it was privately funded. The key is to make it exciting and sexy enough so that people will want to dump TONS of money into it... As a private venture, it cannot be as bloated and as costly as previous government space projects, or it will surely fail.
I will wait to see how this works out, this is definitely something to watch. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see competitors spring up if this thing looks like it will actually fly (in a financial sense, that is).
Picture it: A far-off shot of the moon base, cuts to a close up of one of the satellite dishes. "Drink Coke", emblazoned vividly on the dish, competes with the "Reebok" emblem on the side of the lunar rover sitting next to it.
WOO!!
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
This is quite interesting...if i had a sh!t pot full of money, i would do the same thing. I think this is the perfect next step for people who drive those gigantic Navigators and Land Rovers and all those BIG cars...they need yet another BIG thing to take focus off of their small...business mishaps...
Bye,
TYLER
I can see it now, blinking billboards advertising Pepsi, and Micro$oft on the moon. Hey Bill Gates should buy MIR !!
Some things I've noticed while looking around their site:
1) Their primary purpose is to make money (and to "have fun"). I don't know if I'd want to go to a moon base made by someone wanting solely to make money. I wouldn't put it past some managers (who will stay safely on Earth) to cut corners somewhere. And something like that would be disasterous. Their official policy:
To keep costs under control, the spacecraft are built using commercial aircraft standards and procedures.
I don't know if that's good or bad. Are aircraft standards good enough for spacecraft? A spacecraft can't just land somewhere if something goes wrong. OTOH, most all airplane flights have no problems (except maybe delays at airports).
2) Having a lunar colony created by a corporation is not too far fetched. The first European colonies in America were funded by corporations. Unfortunately, the first English colony, Roanoke, was a miserable failure -- everyone was gone (presumed dead) a few years after they arrived. Jamestown (the second attempt) also had a bad record with many people dying the first winter.
3) The lunar colony won't succeed until people have a good reason to leave Earth (i.e. escape a big brother government). Right now, I don't think we have that sort of intolerable situation.
Overall, I think it's a good idea (in principle). One must be wary and not but one's complete trust in this particular company until they prove themselves.
"Save the whales, feed the hungry, free the mallocs" -- author unknown
Check out the Artemis Society Sponsors...
'Hail Eris' and all that crap.
This is just another spoof page hoping to gut a few sheep for the $35/year 'Membership Dues', or godknowshowmuch for the 'Lifetime' membership. Ooh! Count me in boys! I'm sure that the same people who run this site have dozens of others full of pop-up porn ads.
**>>BELCH
While I hate the idea of commercial interests controlling Luna, it appears to be the only way we'll ever get there. NASA is too concerned with PR and politics to do things right.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
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Hmmmm... moon advertising. I wonder what it would say... "If you lived here, you'd be nowhere near home by now!"
--
I read through many of the questions in their FAQ, which immediately threw more questions into my mind. The people involved in this project seem to have a good level of knowledge with regards to space travel and the physics behind it. This is good, of course, since I'd certainly want qualified people if I was going to take this sort of vacation.
;))
But where is the business model? I saw estimates for the feasibility study, project design, and testing. A couple year span is given for each. Where are they getting these numbers? Since they estimate the project to run over a billion dollars, where do they plan to get the capital?
And who's going to risk providing venture capital without a solid plan? They say that they plan to make an immediate profit through the entertainment angle. Well that's fine and dandy, but there is no mention of the overhead associated with doing this. This isn't like a standard vacation. You need lawyers to deal with possible accidents. Special security people would need to protect the enclosed environment from some nutcase going postal.
In short, private enterprise has pros and cons. They avoid the overhead of a government project. However, the people they will be transporting do not have the same level of expertise, trustworthiness, and professionalism as traditional astronauts. This adds to the expense.
Don't get me wrong - I think it would be a beautiful thing if we each had the opportunity to experience space travel. But these guys have their heads in the clouds, and really need to formulate a solid business model before they have any hope of getting off the ground (sorry that was kinda bad
Best regards,
SEAL
There are a few comments about land fills and that the moon is not controlled by anyone body (due to that ancient treaty).
Why?
There is no environment on the moon, hence nothing to ruin. Why not just dump all your non-organics (you would throw your organics back into the system) in a crater until you wanted to get arround to recycling them?
There also is no UN Peacekeepers(tm) to keep you from controling the moon. If your there, its yours, as per the ancient laws of playgrounds and nations. THat stupid treaty was just a handwave by the US during the initial moon race.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
We can all own part of the Moon. I think there's a booth in the Boston Museum of Science that sells land on the moon.
$6 Billion is roughly how much it would cost to make a self-supporting colony, but that cost would not satisfy current saftey concerns of safe crew retrieval in the event of an emergency. You'd need roughly another $1.5 Billion for that for a total of 5 missions - still somewhat less than the ISS costs.
:v)
Profit for the first mission is conservatively estimated at $3 Billion in the Artemis business plan. The base would be permanently habitable from the end of the 3rd mission as currently envisaged.
Vik
So if this can be done under $2000M, there are several private individuals who could do this, all alone.
Bill Gates could do it with less money than his worth fluctuates during a NASDAQ session. And if Bill does it, Larry will have to do it faster and bigger.
Surely some of all these internet billionares have a space dream??
Hehehe..if that were a criteria then no one would take Slashdot seriously. Your point is well taken, though. Still, $35 to just dream you are helping could also bring you great satisfaction.
----------
Twisted Little Gnome - The Podcasting Network http://www.twistedlittlegnome.com
At least they're honest.
//Insert Meaningfull Quote Here
But there ain't no whales, So we tell tall tales, And sing a whal'in tune!
If you would like to contribute to Artemis but cannot afford to make a monetary donation, we are presently accepting the following items: 1) Jet propellants 2) Square, flat sheet metal; please send sheets of no less than 100m on a side 3) Back-issues of "Penthouse" 4) Giant balls of tin-foil 5) Back-issues of "Playboy" 6) Large plexiglass cubes 7) Reinforced steel beams 8) 20m rivets 9) Pepsi, 3x24-packs 10) Car radio tuners, police scanners, commercial-grade radar detectors 11) Pringles 12) Jackalope hooves, horns, or eyelashes 13) Box-packing filler pellets 14) Thermally treated heat-resist tiles 15) Penguins (live) 16) Dogcows (chopped into tiny pieces and individually wrapped, please) 17) Manual type-writers Send any of the above to: Carport, G. F. Cooper c/o Mrs. P. Cooper 207 Flurgle Ave. Somewhere, CA 90129
so, yes, $1 trillion for space exploration would not be out of line compared to the Cold War-winning expenditures of the past.
...a business has to show a profit which means it has to get results CHEAPLY.
---
Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
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Im fairly sure that a group talented enough to build a moon base would also be talented enough to run a spell checker on their web page. This has to be a hoax.
-------- I dig Mobile Phones
Remember last year when they sold land on the moon? Moon bases have been privately funded for years. I've been getting lots of email about investing in moon bases. National Enquirer also has information on moon bases long before anyone else.
So, while the Artemus project will probably turn out to be a failure (although somebody will make lots of money off it anyway, because the aforementioned P.T. Barnum said something about fools and money...), I think it underscores the fact that space exploration needs to be commercialized. Turn NASA into a regulatory body, and hand off space exploration to joint projects between Universities and corporations. If the world governments wants to be a partner on some of these projects, let them pay their share, and enjoy their share of the profits/losses.
He has long been a proponent of the view that space travel will be funded privately and that ultimately, we'll have hotels in space. In fact, I believe he even had some kind of tie up with Hilton, and apparently Hilton is depicted in 2001 (can't recall it myself).
l ife02.htm
Here are some of his predictions:
http://www.suntimes.co.za/1999/03/14/lifestyle/
2012: Aerospace planes enter service. The history of space travel has repeated that of aeronautics, although more slowly, because
the technical problems are so much greater. From Gagarin to
commercial space flight has taken twice as long as from the Wright
Brothers to the DC3.
2013: Despite the understandable apprehensions of Buckingham
Palace, Prince Harry becomes the first member of the British royal
family to fly in space.
2014: Construction of Hilton Orbiter Hotel begins, by assembling
and converting the giant Shuttle tanks previously allowed to fall
back to Earth.
Sure, this seems awesome at first sight. Just like the SciAm special edition on future space flight.
Of course, any attempt to put apes on the moon in a large scale will inevitably be: 1) hideously expensive; 2) rather unpleasant for the poor travelers; 3) completely pointless - if they tried to use the moon for population-control, like they did with the American West, they'd quickly find out that the moon does not have that much room... neither would have Mars, by the way. So while this may be fun and interesting, I highly doubt that it's going to be a success.
OTOH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, things are going to get much easier. Wanna colonize the moon? Send a missile-sized egg full of appropriately programmed nanobots and a bit of energy... in a year they'll have filled the lunar landscape.
OEAH, as soon as somebody comes up with appropriate assembler technology, somebody is going to come up with a way to use it to make mind uploading a possibility... and then we'll no longer need humans. There ceases to be an "apes in space" problem, because cyberpeople aren't going to be as fragile, large or space-consuming as apes. So it'll get 1) much cheaper; 2) not unpleasant at all; 3) much more reasonable - the moon is no longer the limit; immortal cyberbeings can colonize the entire galaxy even without faster-than-light technology.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Next, how many of those launched vehicles you listed are certified for human launches? Soyuz, I think, is the only one and it can only hold a few people. $10,000/lb is for the shuttle which is the only human ready launch vehicle that would support more than, say, 3 people. Even the shuttle is only ready to hold 7, maybe 9 if modified a little. If modified a lot it could hold a lot, but that would take money, too, raising the cost of a launch. Remember, humans need pressurized areas and oxygen that cargo doesn't need. That raises the cost of a launch vehicle significantly. The Delta II can also only launch a max of 4000lbs to geosynchronous orbit and the future Delta IV can launch between 9000 and 29000 lbs depending on the config. If you're launching moon bases that need constructing, that will cost a lot plus you'll need a construction crew (highly trained will cost a lot more).
I'm too lazy to do more research on what exactly the lowest human capable launch is, but I just wanted to make the point in my reply to the original post that those cheap technologies are a LONG way off. Especially considering how slowly the aerospace industry as a whole moves. I have worked in the industry and with NASA, so I have some idea how slowly. I am all for human missions as quickly as possible, but this one just seems a little off. Travel and leisure into space would be the coolest and I would pay A LOT for it, but I don't foresee many people wanting to pay $10,000 (at that theoretical $100/lb for a 100lb person) just to orbit the earth for a few hours.
IANAL, but I play one on
... so the guy that says he owns the moon owns exactly nothing.
That principle applies to everything, by the way, even things for which you've paid money --- your receipt merely gives you some likelihood of marshalling others to defend what you say is yours. There is no other meaning to "ownership", despite what any politicians, lawyers or philosophers may say. It boils down to just this single pragmatic issue.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I don't think it'll happen without nanotech, not only because of the costs involved, but even more so because materials currently have a strength to weight ratio so low that it only barely lets us get those huge boosters off the ground without blowing us into little bits in the first place. We just can't blast that stuff out the back of our rockets fast enough to use the fuel efficiently, it's too dangerous. An astronaut's life is very much more in the balance during this stage than later, and tourists won't buy that in large numbers.
:-)
In contrast, with strength of materials rising by a factor of 10 purely as a result of atomic precision in nanofacturing (ie. relatively basic nanomachines would suffice), you can look forward to space planes not much more expensive than private jets for getting every well-funded man, woman and dog into space, and that *would* change all the rules.
Quite apart from nanotech changing all the rules of economics anyway, of course.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Thank you Greg! I was on the inside of some of these mailing lists a little while back, and they really are getting something done. The whole moonbase thing just doesn't seem to reach out to most of the tech guys I have talked to however... Oh well.
You have managed to be ignorant, offensive and incorrect several times all in one post!
/. postings will show. The people who run the site (several dozen) are enthusiastic volunteers managing several thousand web pages, data tables and images contributed by society members from all over the world.
:v)
No, it's not a spoof as a quick perusal of the
I can assure you that Artemis does not indulge in creating many sites - having just one that big is enough of a headache. While you may appreciate pop-up porn I hate to dissapoint you; there's none because it is not appropriate material with which to encourage today's youth to look to a bigger and more amazing future.
One of the more frequent questions I ask myself is why people knock the project, especially when they obviously haven't got a clue as to how it is all going to work or what they're talking about. Why knock it? What's their motive? What will they gain?
Vik
Not a thing against the project I assure you. I would love to go to the moon. If it works out for these guys I'll be there as soon as I can pay for it. Every real geeks fantasy IMO...
//Insert Meaningfull Quote Here
In all seriousness, who owns the moon? Who decides where bases can be set up? Is it just some committee somewhere, or is it truly first-come-first-serve? I can't imagine the possible disputes that could erupt with the latter... Furthermore, are there regulations about where on the moon you can be? I.e., if they can set up base on this side of the moon, in a couple hundred years there'll be no "moon" left, but just a really big city 250,000 miles up.
Just some thoughts.
Sorry to say - the moon already _is_ owned. At least
:) )
according to a story on As it Happens heard on CBC and APR. I heard the story on the
show about two years ago, and proceeded to find a link to the people
that claim lunar possession.
According to what the show said, there was a treaty signed between countries that no country could declare ownership of the moon. But nowhere did it say that no individual could.
The person who noticed this said at the time that he was going to sue NASA for leaving a mess on his propriety. And they're selling 18000 acre proprieties for 30 bucks.
(Yeah, I know. Its most likely a scam. But I just had to point it out.
OFTC: By the community, for the community
We're vikings on the moon!
We carry a harpoon!!
God Fucking Damnit
Humankind doesn't advance without this kind of pie-in-the-sky fantasizing by a bunch of
dreamers. It's easy to sit back and shoot down the this group's plans, but how does that
help? I believe the superpowers of the mid-21st Century are going to be the nations and
grouips of nations that move into space for commercial exploitation. Unfortunately, not
since JFK has the U.S. had a leader with the vision, the intelligence, the rhetorical ability,
and the chutzpah to ram through a $1 trillion (in today's terms) manned moon project.
Now, as technological prowess has proliferated globally, other nation-states such as
Japan, China and India have developed spacefaring ability, even as the U.S. and Russia
have backed off. Instead of a sort of Pax Americana in the skies, with U.S. space fleets
maintaining fair and free trading routes much as the British fleets did in the 19th century,
we will probably see a free-for-all with inimical, totalitarian powers like China setting up
military bases in orbit while American politicians wring their hands helplessly.
Go, Artemis!
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
Why do we have to wait for NASA, the European Space Agency, etc. to build space stations and better space vehicles? I fully expect commercial industry to take over this role in the big space agencies drag their feet for too long. The tech isn't so expensive anymore so as to be out of the realm of private business. If company foo wants to start building a station, I'm all for it.