An award for someone who gave out an award? Why don't we recognise actual innovators?
Did you even read the linked page? I think his list of accomplishments more than qualifies him for the prize:
2004 - Co-founded and currently serves as Chairman of Rocket Racing League - Combining the excitement of Indy car racing with the challenge of Rocketry, this league will have rocket planes race against each other on a 3D race track in the sky. Races are scheduled to begin next year.
1997 - Co-founded Space Adventures Ltd - Space Adventures is the leading space tourism travel agency. Space Adventures is best known for arranging the flight of Dennis Tito to the International Space Station in 2001, making him the first space tourist.
1996 - Founded and currently serves as Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation - In addition to the successful Ansari X PRIZE, Diamandis is leading the Foundation in its effort to create prizes in several other industries including genomics, water treatment, education, as well as, the automotive industry.
1995 -Co-Founded and served as President of Angel Technologies Corporation - Angel Technologies Corporation is a commercial communications company developing wireless broadband communications networks.
1993 - Chairman & CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation - The only commercial space company in the world offering FAA-certified weightless flights utilizing a Boeing 727-200 aircraft. More than 200 people have experienced weightlessness since flights began three years ago.
1991 - Founded and served as Director of Constellation Communications, Inc. (CCI) - CCI is one of five low-Earth orbit applicants designing a low-Earth orbit satellite constellation for voice telephony.
1989 - Founded and served as CEO of International MicroSpace, Inc. (IMI) - IMI was an entrepreneurial space technologies company focusing on the provision of low-cost launch services (ORBEX(TM) launch vehicle program).
1987 - Founder & Managing Director & CEO of International Space University (ISU) - ISU is the world's leading graduate program for multi-national and multi-disciplinary study of space.
1985 - Co-founded the Space Generation Foundation - A non-profit organization to create a sense of identity in all people born since the advent of the Space Age on October 4, 1957. The Foundation supports numerous educational and research projects.
1980 - Founded the Students for Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) - SEDS is currently the world's largest student based pro-space organization.
Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at Caltech, has some online lecture videos from a course he teaches each year on the neural basis of consciousness. They're pretty neat, and give a nice overview of visual neuroscience. There's lots of fun stuff about how splitting the brain splits consciousness, experiments which probe at our inner "zombie agents," and so forth.
> 500 million isn't enough to develop a long term, repeatable, economical vehicle for launches.
The $500 million is basically seed funding. In fact, each of the 6 finalists has stated that even if they didn't get the money, they would still develop their vehicles, albeit on a lengthened schedule. They forsee a large commercial market for orbital transportation.
You do realize that (in today's dollars) the Saturn 5 cost over $2.4 billion per launch, right? Saying that NASA should resurrect the Saturn 5 to perform the same space station servicing role that they're hoping this $500 million (spread over 4 years) program will accomplish is just silly.
The NASA test plane is actually mentioned in the article:
This is not the first attempt at an oblique-wing aircraft. SpaceShipOne creator Burt Rutan designed a switch-wing plane with NASA in 1979. But the slanted wings made the craft hard to fly -- when the pilot pulled the nose up, the plane would roll to one side.
The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 1: The Content, Quality, and Accessibility of Care. The more inpatient-based and specialist-oriented pattern of practice observed in high-spending regions largely explains regional differences in Medicare spending. Neither quality of care nor access to care appear to be better for Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions.
The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 2: Health Outcomes and Satisfaction with Care. Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions receive more care than those in lower-spending regions but do not have better health outcomes or satisfaction with care.
When reading the parent comment, I thought it was a little bit odd that it was talking about stem cells when the article has nothing to do with stem cells. After a quick google search, it turns out that the parent comment is actually a verbatim copy of a comment by someone else on a story last year:
In fact, just about all the prior comments by "janet-on" seem to be verbatim copies of comments made by other people. The trick seems to work rather well, considering that the previous three comments all got modded to a score of 5, and the current comment is now at score 4.
Personally, I'm guessing that "janet-on" is a bot someone made to try to accumulate karma, to allow them to moderate comments.
With the election system of the US, it's always 2 parties with nobody having thet slightest chance to muscle in, at best in local elections
This problem of always having to go with the lesser of two evils constantly frustrates me. I rather like this proposal by Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings:
I'd love to see ballots printed with "None of the above" as an option. If that option wins the election, we start over, with no incumbents, and new primaries. Call it the American form of lack-of-confidence vote.
It turns out that there's a "Voters for None of the Above" organization dedicated to this, but they seem to be mostly inactive:
How would a binding "None of the Above" on the ballot work?
In any state with a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, the list of candidates for each office would be followed by the votable line "NOTA - For a new election", or something similar. If NOTA gets more votes than any candidate for the office, then no one is elected to that office; instead, a follow-up by-election with new candidates must be held to fill that office, until a candidate wins a plurality of votes among all other candidates including "None of the Above." "None of the Above" on the ballot has many thoughtful advocates, including The Wall Street Journal and Ralph Nader. Nevada has had a non-binding NOTA on the ballot since 1976. (See NOTA bills and laws for a list of all NOTA bills and laws. See NOTA options for the full range of binding and non-binding NOTA Voter Consent ballot options.)
Why are Voter Consent Ballot Options, such as a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, a good idea?
* All legitimate consent requires the ability to withhold consent; "None of the Above" gives the voter the ballot option to withhold consent from an election to office, just as voters can cast a "No" vote on a ballot question.
* Would end the "must hire" elections where voters are often forced to vote for the least unacceptable candidate, the all too familiar "lesser evil."
* A candidate must obtain voter consent to be elected, even if running unopposed.
* Voters would decide the fate of the political parties' choices, instead of the parties deciding the voters' choices.
* It should reduce negative campaigning by encouraging candidates to campaign for their own candidacy rather than against their opponent's candidacy.
* Many voters and non voters, who now register their disapproval of all candidates for an office by not voting, could cast a meaningful vote.
* The meaning of elections should become more clear, since voters would no longer be tempted to vote for a presumed losing candidate, with whom they really do not agree, as a protest vote.
* Establishes flexible, voter controlled term limits of one term for every office, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended.
* Campaign contributors who give to all candidates to insure "access" would no longer be sure they backed the winner; in general, buying elections should become a more uncertain enterprise.
* Improves checks and balances between voters and political parties, especially needed in jurisdictions with one dominant political party or nearly identical alternatives.
* Political parties would nominate candidates knowing those candidates must be a better choice for voters than "None of the Above."
* Follow-up by-elections are far less costly than electing unacceptable candidates to office.
Assurance contracts rely on someone or something to enforce them. Just who do you think that someone is? Do you honestly think a company whose primary goal is to make money is going to coperate without being coerced when there's a cost associated?
Libertarian answer: Enforcement of contract law is one of the few duties of government.
Anarcho-capitalist answer: You would stipulate an enforcement agency in the contract, or make sure that all the participants are contracted with legal systems which are compatible with enforcement of the assurance contract.
When will people learn that some things that most people agree are both beneficial and desirable to society actually COST money, rather than allow people to make it. Taxes are suppose to cover these things.
This is a common misconception, but society != government. There are ways (like assurance contracts) to accomplish mutually beneficial goals without having to rely on the coercive monopoly of governments.
The ONLY way that we're going into space permanently is if we forget about government taking the lead, and focus on capitalism.
I agree to an extent, but it's interesting how much the average person overestimates the amount the federal government gives to NASA. From a recent article in the Space Review on the government and business case for space activities:
One question asked people to estimate what percentage of the overall federal budget went to NASA. At the Capitol Hill event Unland showed several video clips where, to few people's surprise, focus group participants overestimated--often grossly--NASA's sub-one-percent share of the budget: answers ranged from five to fifteen percent, with one person saying "somewhere in the thirties". Those anecdotes confirmed previous surveys where people also overestimated NASA's budget.
Meant to point out that most of what I've been saying in this thread is straight from the Mars Direct plan. Google will tell you lots more, or pick up a copy of 'The Case for Mars' by Zubrin. It's a bit dated (ie doesn't have the latest Mars mission data), but none of the physics or economics have changed much.
Thanks for the tip. I've heard good things about Zubrin's book, but haven't had time to read it yet. Hopefully this summer...
My gut reaction, though, is that you can break near-Earth ops into two categories: things leaving Earth orbit, for which ground-launched lift and throw wins, and station keeping / orbit change manuevers, for which low thrust, high performance things like ion drives are the win.
This sounds reasonable, although I'm not convinced that launching everything in one go (including launching your high-reliability crew with much of your cargo and fuel, which doesn't need as high reliability) necessarily beats in-orbit assembly.
Also, I'm guessing that LOX + kerosene from Earth is cheaper than trying to mine lunar ice. A grand a pound sounds cheap relative to anything from the moon, and it probably won't be long until that's the Earth-launch price.
I'm not sure I follow. If/when launch costs are reduced, the cost of shipping mining machinery will just get lower. I don't see how the cost of the machinery itself would be more than $1000 per pound of fuel produced.
The biggest reason not to like that plan is that there's just no need for refueling. A two-part lift and throw to Mars will produce a very real mission.
I should clarify a little: You're absolutely right that it's silly to think that a lunar mine is a necessity for a human Mars mission. However, it seems like it would be more economical to, say, have Falcon 9's send up fuel to an orbital fuel depot (maybe a modified Bigelow space station module?). You could then use a couple more Falcon 9's (or maybe something slightly larger) to send up parts 1 and 2 from Zubrin's plan, and refuel them in orbit to send off to Mars. I haven't really worked it out, but I suspect it would cost substantially less (even in the short term) than trying to send up a couple of shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicles. In the long-term, you can reuse a lot of the infrastructure (maybe even the return vehicle) to reduce costs further.
Note that this is totally off-the-cuff, so I might be making some faulty assumptions.
Well, yes, that's true. But if you're building a fuel depot, it's cheaper to build it on Mars -- landing on Mars takes less delta-V, thanks to aerobraking, and the fuel is easier to make since there's abundant CO2.
But why not have fuel depots both around/on Mars and Earth-Luna space?
Also, if people like SpaceX really get cheap launch going, then bulk goods to orbit are cheap enough that it's likely not worth building a fuel plant on the moon, given the cost of setting it up and running it.
This is quite possible. I'd love it if somebody with more expertise (and time) than me actually tried doing a thorough economic analysis of it, to see where the balance point is between fuel costs and construction costs.
And all this ignores the fact that there's demonstrated technology out there that can do single shot lift + throw to Mars from the ground. A vehicle that was performance-equivalent to the Shuttle stack, but with a cargo pod instead of the orbiter, is sufficient to put a useful payload on a Mars insertion trajectory without any complex refueling operations.
True, but what solution is most cost-effective in the long-term?
Also, I should probably note that I think having lunar-supplied fuel depots around Earth isn't as useful for Earth-Mars transportation as it would be for transit around Earth and cislunar space.
God, am I SICK of that argument. Bush and his cronies started that to justify going to the moon, but it a total joke.
I agree, launching directly from the moon to Mars is a joke. However, using the moon as a source for refueling stations in Earth orbit or a lagrange point seems somewhat more reasonable.
Yeah, but Mars is closer than the Moon, measured in properly accounted delta-V (aerobrake at Mars and bring some LH2, converted on site into LOX / Methane with the aid of the Martian CO2 atmosphere). Taking a detour to the Moon adds complexity and delta-V, and making rocket fuel there is harder than doing it on Mars.
I think the idea is not to refuel directly on the moon, but to launch the fuel from the moon to something like one of the Lagrange points, which is where the refueling would occur.
2. Helium-3, fusion catalyst that's only found on earth as a by product of nuclear reactions and is about 50,000 a pound. That alone makes it worth it moneywise.
In his book "Moonrush," Dennis Wingo argues that besides Helium-3, platinum-group metals would also be a critical resource. From a review:
In the first part of Moonrush, Wingo makes the case for how lunar resources are critical for meeting the increasing energy demands of terrestrial civilization. Most people are aware of the fact that the quantity of fossil fuels, notably petroleum, is finite, and will run out sooner or later. Wingo discusses this in detail in the book, noting that even the most optimistic assessments of petroleum reserves--ones that make assumptions unlikely to be borne out in practice--would be insufficient to get the world through the 21st century. One alternative to gasoline-burning engines currently under active development is the hydrogen-powered fuel cell. Even these, though, have a resources problem that Wingo describes in the book: they rely on expensive, scarce platinum-group metals (PGMs). If the world tries to make the transition from gasoline engines to fuel cells, it could exhaust the supply of PGM elements on the Earth.
Of course, there is no shortage of such metals in space, particularly in asteroids. The Moon, on the other hand, would seem to be an unlikely place to find PGMs: the collisional process that formed from the Moon left it mostly devoid of heavy metals. However, Wingo makes an ingenious case for finding PGMs on or near the lunar surface, in the form of debris from asteroid impacts. While conventional wisdom has argued that impacts of large asteroids would vaporize most of the impactor, modern computer modeling has shown that a significant fraction of an asteroid impacting the Earth would survive in some form. In fact, some major sources of PGMs on Earth, such as Sudbury in Canada and sites in South Africa, have been linked to asteroid impacts. The Moon's lower gravity would mean slower impacts, making it more likely that significant portions of asteroids could survive. PGMs mined from those impacts could meet the fuel-cell needs of the Earth for centuries; the mining process would, in turn, also generate other metals like iron and nickel that could be used for settlements on the Moon and beyond.
The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has released a rules draft for a telerobotic construction competition. Competitors will have 24 hours to use their robots to construct a water-tight pipeline at least 25m long through Mars-like terrain, with a control latency of 20 minutes. The foundation is seeking feedback on the rules draft until July 15, as well as ideas for contest names and logos. NASA will provide $250K in prize money to competition winners, as part of their Centennial Challenges program for space technology competitions.
On a tangential note, it looks like the submission I pasted above was rejected. Anyone have suggestions for improvements to it before I try submitting again tomorrow?
That is why grandparent used the term deep ecology. In environmental philosophy and environmental science, deep ecologists believe that natural processes have inherent value. That is, if there were no humans on the earth, spotted owls, cuddly koalas, and majestic eagles would still have "value" and a right to exist, etc.
As I understand it, deep ecologists see inherent value in the well-being of ecologies, i.e. living organisms and their interactions. I don't think they have any inherent attachment to rocks and craters.
I really don't understand the use of a lunar colony. I'm all for Mars and the asteroids, but the Moon? What's there that's useful?
If I understand correctly, you can get oxygen from lunar regolith, and hydrogen from water ice. Combine that with energy (from either solar or nuclear sources) to properly process it, and you've got what you need to generate rocket fuel on the moon. This would be useful not only for lunar operations, but also to provide refueling for operations to Mars and elsewhere.
Rather than spreading out and destroying other planets/moons/celestial bodies, how about first learning, as a species, how to preserve the planet we are already on?
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. It's kind of like saying that people shouldn't leave their hometown until everybody in the town is living in peace and harmony with nature. Of course, now that I think about it, I have known people who would argue precisely that...
Coincidentally, just a few minutes ago I submitted a slashdot story about a telerobotic construction challenge which NASA is funding, which could spawn technologies which would be quite useful for a lunar mining facility. In case the submission gets rejected, here's the text of it (hopefully my posting it here doesn't somehow lead to an auto-rejection):
The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has released a rules draft for a telerobotic construction competition. Competitors will have 24 hours to use their robots to construct a water-tight pipeline at least 25m long through Mars-like terrain, with a control latency of 20 minutes. The foundation is seeking feedback on the rules draft until July 15, as well as ideas for contest names and logos. NASA will provide $250K in prize money to competition winners, as part of their Centennial Challenges program for space technology competitions.
Slashdot Mirror
An award for someone who gave out an award? Why don't we recognise actual innovators?
Did you even read the linked page? I think his list of accomplishments more than qualifies him for the prize:
2004 - Co-founded and currently serves as Chairman of Rocket Racing League - Combining the excitement of Indy car racing with the challenge of Rocketry, this league will have rocket planes race against each other on a 3D race track in the sky. Races are scheduled to begin next year.
1997 - Co-founded Space Adventures Ltd - Space Adventures is the leading space tourism travel agency. Space Adventures is best known for arranging the flight of Dennis Tito to the International Space Station in 2001, making him the first space tourist.
1996 - Founded and currently serves as Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation - In addition to the successful Ansari X PRIZE, Diamandis is leading the Foundation in its effort to create prizes in several other industries including genomics, water treatment, education, as well as, the automotive industry.
1995 -Co-Founded and served as President of Angel Technologies Corporation - Angel Technologies Corporation is a commercial communications company developing wireless broadband communications networks.
1993 - Chairman & CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation - The only commercial space company in the world offering FAA-certified weightless flights utilizing a Boeing 727-200 aircraft. More than 200 people have experienced weightlessness since flights began three years ago.
1991 - Founded and served as Director of Constellation Communications, Inc. (CCI) - CCI is one of five low-Earth orbit applicants designing a low-Earth orbit satellite constellation for voice telephony.
1989 - Founded and served as CEO of International MicroSpace, Inc. (IMI) - IMI was an entrepreneurial space technologies company focusing on the provision of low-cost launch services (ORBEX(TM) launch vehicle program).
1987 - Founder & Managing Director & CEO of International Space University (ISU) - ISU is the world's leading graduate program for multi-national and multi-disciplinary study of space.
1985 - Co-founded the Space Generation Foundation - A non-profit organization to create a sense of identity in all people born since the advent of the Space Age on October 4, 1957. The Foundation supports numerous educational and research projects.
1980 - Founded the Students for Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) - SEDS is currently the world's largest student based pro-space organization.
Christof Koch, a neuroscientist at Caltech, has some online lecture videos from a course he teaches each year on the neural basis of consciousness. They're pretty neat, and give a nice overview of visual neuroscience. There's lots of fun stuff about how splitting the brain splits consciousness, experiments which probe at our inner "zombie agents," and so forth.
> 500 million isn't enough to develop a long term, repeatable, economical vehicle for launches.
The $500 million is basically seed funding. In fact, each of the 6 finalists has stated that even if they didn't get the money, they would still develop their vehicles, albeit on a lengthened schedule. They forsee a large commercial market for orbital transportation.
You do realize that (in today's dollars) the Saturn 5 cost over $2.4 billion per launch, right? Saying that NASA should resurrect the Saturn 5 to perform the same space station servicing role that they're hoping this $500 million (spread over 4 years) program will accomplish is just silly.
The NASA test plane is actually mentioned in the article:
This is not the first attempt at an oblique-wing aircraft. SpaceShipOne creator Burt Rutan designed a switch-wing plane with NASA in 1979. But the slanted wings made the craft hard to fly -- when the pilot pulled the nose up, the plane would roll to one side.
Or, why not put it towards healthcare and get our life expectancy rates up?
Despite popular belief, having the government spend more money on healthcare doesn't actually improve health.
From the Annals of Internal Medicine:
http://www.annals.org/content/vol138/issue4/
The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 1: The Content, Quality, and Accessibility of Care. The more inpatient-based and specialist-oriented pattern of practice observed in high-spending regions largely explains regional differences in Medicare spending. Neither quality of care nor access to care appear to be better for Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions.
The Implications of Regional Variations in Medicare Spending. Part 2: Health Outcomes and Satisfaction with Care. Medicare enrollees in higher-spending regions receive more care than those in lower-spending regions but do not have better health outcomes or satisfaction with care.
When reading the parent comment, I thought it was a little bit odd that it was talking about stem cells when the article has nothing to do with stem cells. After a quick google search, it turns out that the parent comment is actually a verbatim copy of a comment by someone else on a story last year:
4 &cid=14316980
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=17190
In fact, just about all the prior comments by "janet-on" seem to be verbatim copies of comments made by other people. The trick seems to work rather well, considering that the previous three comments all got modded to a score of 5, and the current comment is now at score 4.
Personally, I'm guessing that "janet-on" is a bot someone made to try to accumulate karma, to allow them to moderate comments.
With the election system of the US, it's always 2 parties with nobody having thet slightest chance to muscle in, at best in local elections
This problem of always having to go with the lesser of two evils constantly frustrates me. I rather like this proposal by Rand Simberg over at Transterrestrial Musings:
I'd love to see ballots printed with "None of the above" as an option. If that option wins the election, we start over, with no incumbents, and new primaries. Call it the American form of lack-of-confidence vote.
It turns out that there's a "Voters for None of the Above" organization dedicated to this, but they seem to be mostly inactive:
http://www.nota.org/
From their page:
How would a binding "None of the Above" on the ballot work?
In any state with a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, the list of candidates for each office would be followed by the votable line "NOTA - For a new election", or something similar. If NOTA gets more votes than any candidate for the office, then no one is elected to that office; instead, a follow-up by-election with new candidates must be held to fill that office, until a candidate wins a plurality of votes among all other candidates including "None of the Above." "None of the Above" on the ballot has many thoughtful advocates, including The Wall Street Journal and Ralph Nader. Nevada has had a non-binding NOTA on the ballot since 1976. (See NOTA bills and laws for a list of all NOTA bills and laws. See NOTA options for the full range of binding and non-binding NOTA Voter Consent ballot options.)
Why are Voter Consent Ballot Options, such as a permanent, binding "None of the Above" on the ballot, a good idea?
* All legitimate consent requires the ability to withhold consent; "None of the Above" gives the voter the ballot option to withhold consent from an election to office, just as voters can cast a "No" vote on a ballot question.
* Would end the "must hire" elections where voters are often forced to vote for the least unacceptable candidate, the all too familiar "lesser evil."
* A candidate must obtain voter consent to be elected, even if running unopposed.
* Voters would decide the fate of the political parties' choices, instead of the parties deciding the voters' choices.
* It should reduce negative campaigning by encouraging candidates to campaign for their own candidacy rather than against their opponent's candidacy.
* Many voters and non voters, who now register their disapproval of all candidates for an office by not voting, could cast a meaningful vote.
* The meaning of elections should become more clear, since voters would no longer be tempted to vote for a presumed losing candidate, with whom they really do not agree, as a protest vote.
* Establishes flexible, voter controlled term limits of one term for every office, as the framers of the U.S. Constitution intended.
* Campaign contributors who give to all candidates to insure "access" would no longer be sure they backed the winner; in general, buying elections should become a more uncertain enterprise.
* Improves checks and balances between voters and political parties, especially needed in jurisdictions with one dominant political party or nearly identical alternatives.
* Political parties would nominate candidates knowing those candidates must be a better choice for voters than "None of the Above."
* Follow-up by-elections are far less costly than electing unacceptable candidates to office.
The problem isn't that the government is holding back private industry - the government is mostly in the pocket of private industry anyway.
I'd finesse the statement a little: government is in the pocket of monolithic megacorporations, and is holding back smaller entrepreneurial companies.
Assurance contracts rely on someone or something to enforce them. Just who do you think that someone is? Do you honestly think a company whose primary goal is to make money is going to coperate without being coerced when there's a cost associated?
Libertarian answer: Enforcement of contract law is one of the few duties of government.
Anarcho-capitalist answer: You would stipulate an enforcement agency in the contract, or make sure that all the participants are contracted with legal systems which are compatible with enforcement of the assurance contract.
When will people learn that some things that most people agree are both beneficial and desirable to society actually COST money, rather than allow people to make it. Taxes are suppose to cover these things.
This is a common misconception, but society != government. There are ways (like assurance contracts) to accomplish mutually beneficial goals without having to rely on the coercive monopoly of governments.
The ONLY way that we're going into space permanently is if we forget about government taking the lead, and focus on capitalism.
I agree to an extent, but it's interesting how much the average person overestimates the amount the federal government gives to NASA. From a recent article in the Space Review on the government and business case for space activities:
http://thespacereview.com/article/644/1
One question asked people to estimate what percentage of the overall federal budget went to NASA. At the Capitol Hill event Unland showed several video clips where, to few people's surprise, focus group participants overestimated--often grossly--NASA's sub-one-percent share of the budget: answers ranged from five to fifteen percent, with one person saying "somewhere in the thirties". Those anecdotes confirmed previous surveys where people also overestimated NASA's budget.
Meant to point out that most of what I've been saying in this thread is straight from the Mars Direct plan. Google will tell you lots more, or pick up a copy of 'The Case for Mars' by Zubrin. It's a bit dated (ie doesn't have the latest Mars mission data), but none of the physics or economics have changed much.
Thanks for the tip. I've heard good things about Zubrin's book, but haven't had time to read it yet. Hopefully this summer...
My gut reaction, though, is that you can break near-Earth ops into two categories: things leaving Earth orbit, for which ground-launched lift and throw wins, and station keeping / orbit change manuevers, for which low thrust, high performance things like ion drives are the win.
This sounds reasonable, although I'm not convinced that launching everything in one go (including launching your high-reliability crew with much of your cargo and fuel, which doesn't need as high reliability) necessarily beats in-orbit assembly.
Also, I'm guessing that LOX + kerosene from Earth is cheaper than trying to mine lunar ice. A grand a pound sounds cheap relative to anything from the moon, and it probably won't be long until that's the Earth-launch price.
I'm not sure I follow. If/when launch costs are reduced, the cost of shipping mining machinery will just get lower. I don't see how the cost of the machinery itself would be more than $1000 per pound of fuel produced.
The biggest reason not to like that plan is that there's just no need for refueling. A two-part lift and throw to Mars will produce a very real mission.
I should clarify a little: You're absolutely right that it's silly to think that a lunar mine is a necessity for a human Mars mission. However, it seems like it would be more economical to, say, have Falcon 9's send up fuel to an orbital fuel depot (maybe a modified Bigelow space station module?). You could then use a couple more Falcon 9's (or maybe something slightly larger) to send up parts 1 and 2 from Zubrin's plan, and refuel them in orbit to send off to Mars. I haven't really worked it out, but I suspect it would cost substantially less (even in the short term) than trying to send up a couple of shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicles. In the long-term, you can reuse a lot of the infrastructure (maybe even the return vehicle) to reduce costs further.
Note that this is totally off-the-cuff, so I might be making some faulty assumptions.
Well, yes, that's true. But if you're building a fuel depot, it's cheaper to build it on Mars -- landing on Mars takes less delta-V, thanks to aerobraking, and the fuel is easier to make since there's abundant CO2.
But why not have fuel depots both around/on Mars and Earth-Luna space?
Also, if people like SpaceX really get cheap launch going, then bulk goods to orbit are cheap enough that it's likely not worth building a fuel plant on the moon, given the cost of setting it up and running it.
This is quite possible. I'd love it if somebody with more expertise (and time) than me actually tried doing a thorough economic analysis of it, to see where the balance point is between fuel costs and construction costs.
And all this ignores the fact that there's demonstrated technology out there that can do single shot lift + throw to Mars from the ground. A vehicle that was performance-equivalent to the Shuttle stack, but with a cargo pod instead of the orbiter, is sufficient to put a useful payload on a Mars insertion trajectory without any complex refueling operations.
True, but what solution is most cost-effective in the long-term?
Also, I should probably note that I think having lunar-supplied fuel depots around Earth isn't as useful for Earth-Mars transportation as it would be for transit around Earth and cislunar space.
God, am I SICK of that argument. Bush and his cronies started that to justify going to the moon, but it a total joke.
I agree, launching directly from the moon to Mars is a joke. However, using the moon as a source for refueling stations in Earth orbit or a lagrange point seems somewhat more reasonable.
Yeah, but Mars is closer than the Moon, measured in properly accounted delta-V (aerobrake at Mars and bring some LH2, converted on site into LOX / Methane with the aid of the Martian CO2 atmosphere). Taking a detour to the Moon adds complexity and delta-V, and making rocket fuel there is harder than doing it on Mars.
I think the idea is not to refuel directly on the moon, but to launch the fuel from the moon to something like one of the Lagrange points, which is where the refueling would occur.
2. Helium-3, fusion catalyst that's only found on earth as a by product of nuclear reactions and is about 50,000 a pound. That alone makes it worth it moneywise.
In his book "Moonrush," Dennis Wingo argues that besides Helium-3, platinum-group metals would also be a critical resource. From a review:
In the first part of Moonrush, Wingo makes the case for how lunar resources are critical for meeting the increasing energy demands of terrestrial civilization. Most people are aware of the fact that the quantity of fossil fuels, notably petroleum, is finite, and will run out sooner or later. Wingo discusses this in detail in the book, noting that even the most optimistic assessments of petroleum reserves--ones that make assumptions unlikely to be borne out in practice--would be insufficient to get the world through the 21st century. One alternative to gasoline-burning engines currently under active development is the hydrogen-powered fuel cell. Even these, though, have a resources problem that Wingo describes in the book: they rely on expensive, scarce platinum-group metals (PGMs). If the world tries to make the transition from gasoline engines to fuel cells, it could exhaust the supply of PGM elements on the Earth.
Of course, there is no shortage of such metals in space, particularly in asteroids. The Moon, on the other hand, would seem to be an unlikely place to find PGMs: the collisional process that formed from the Moon left it mostly devoid of heavy metals. However, Wingo makes an ingenious case for finding PGMs on or near the lunar surface, in the form of debris from asteroid impacts. While conventional wisdom has argued that impacts of large asteroids would vaporize most of the impactor, modern computer modeling has shown that a significant fraction of an asteroid impacting the Earth would survive in some form. In fact, some major sources of PGMs on Earth, such as Sudbury in Canada and sites in South Africa, have been linked to asteroid impacts. The Moon's lower gravity would mean slower impacts, making it more likely that significant portions of asteroids could survive. PGMs mined from those impacts could meet the fuel-cell needs of the Earth for centuries; the mining process would, in turn, also generate other metals like iron and nickel that could be used for settlements on the Moon and beyond.
The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has released a rules draft for a telerobotic construction competition. Competitors will have 24 hours to use their robots to construct a water-tight pipeline at least 25m long through Mars-like terrain, with a control latency of 20 minutes. The foundation is seeking feedback on the rules draft until July 15, as well as ideas for contest names and logos. NASA will provide $250K in prize money to competition winners, as part of their Centennial Challenges program for space technology competitions.
On a tangential note, it looks like the submission I pasted above was rejected. Anyone have suggestions for improvements to it before I try submitting again tomorrow?
That is why grandparent used the term deep ecology. In environmental philosophy and environmental science, deep ecologists believe that natural processes have inherent value. That is, if there were no humans on the earth, spotted owls, cuddly koalas, and majestic eagles would still have "value" and a right to exist, etc.
As I understand it, deep ecologists see inherent value in the well-being of ecologies, i.e. living organisms and their interactions. I don't think they have any inherent attachment to rocks and craters.
I really don't understand the use of a lunar colony. I'm all for Mars and the asteroids, but the Moon? What's there that's useful?
If I understand correctly, you can get oxygen from lunar regolith, and hydrogen from water ice. Combine that with energy (from either solar or nuclear sources) to properly process it, and you've got what you need to generate rocket fuel on the moon. This would be useful not only for lunar operations, but also to provide refueling for operations to Mars and elsewhere.
And your descendents will destroy other celestial bodies that are out there as well.
What are your thoughts on all the countless celestial bodies which get destroyed whenever a supernova goes off?
Rather than spreading out and destroying other planets/moons/celestial bodies, how about first learning, as a species, how to preserve the planet we are already on?
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. It's kind of like saying that people shouldn't leave their hometown until everybody in the town is living in peace and harmony with nature. Of course, now that I think about it, I have known people who would argue precisely that...
Coincidentally, just a few minutes ago I submitted a slashdot story about a telerobotic construction challenge which NASA is funding, which could spawn technologies which would be quite useful for a lunar mining facility. In case the submission gets rejected, here's the text of it (hopefully my posting it here doesn't somehow lead to an auto-rejection):
The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has released a rules draft for a telerobotic construction competition. Competitors will have 24 hours to use their robots to construct a water-tight pipeline at least 25m long through Mars-like terrain, with a control latency of 20 minutes. The foundation is seeking feedback on the rules draft until July 15, as well as ideas for contest names and logos. NASA will provide $250K in prize money to competition winners, as part of their Centennial Challenges program for space technology competitions.