Site for Moon Base Determined 738
Deinhard writes "Going hand-in-hand with the recent discussion on Moon Bases, Space.com is reporting that the perfect spot for a moon base has been found. According to the article, 'the best spot to settle on the Moon may be on the northern rim of Peary crater, close to the north pole.' What makes the location so important is that it is permanently lit, with a balmy -58 Fahrenheit (-50 C)."
Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
ice station zebra (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:2, Insightful)
Things like moonbases are just extraneous.
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:4, Insightful)
Took 11 years ... (Score:2, Insightful)
11 years for the data to be analyzed.
In another equally insightful phrase...
"That fits in neatly with the White House vision [space.com] of using the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars."
No wonder.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, just a big rock, chock full of raw materials we need for your trip to Mars, and with only 1/6 the gravity and no atmosphere, it's easy to get those materials into orbit.
"Skipping" the moon is sheer lunacy (pardon the pun). Once established, the Moon Base will py for itself countless times over.
Re:Moon Bases in Lava Tubes. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:1, Insightful)
No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:4, Insightful)
Finance: Money for Moon Base borrowed (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah, but you assume they actually intend to pay for it.
We all know that Moon Base Alpha will be paid for with money borrowed by China.
After all, it's not like they have a space program
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
Now we are pumping almost a quarter of our national tax revenues into paying the interest on the exploding debt. The average schmo got $300, the wealthy got hundreds of billions in tax cuts, and we are BROKE. Not an accident; now come the cuts in every guvmint expenditure hated by the right, along with huge increases in defense and surveillance spending.
We aren't going to buy any moon bases
We are buying a war machine, an occupation authority with 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, an upcoming invasion and occupation of Iran, economic collapse, and a permanent diversion of 25+ percent and rising of our national tax revenues into the hands of the people lending us the money to go broke.
No moon bases, not ever. A debt society trying to dig out from under the wreckage of the next ten years, for most of this century.
Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
And estate taxes prevent riches from piling up ad infinitum in one family. You shouldn't have an unassailable advantage over everyone else just because your parents are richer than everyone else.
Since When... (Score:3, Insightful)
Have lower taxes ever kept politicians from spending money they don't have?
Especially considering the current administration is spending money like a drunken democrat?
Congress just has to write a check. They'll let someone else (i.e. the American taxpayers) figure out how to pay for it.
Whatever happened to Malapert Mountain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No problem (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no problem with a lack of oxygen. The vacuum would kill you way before you had a chance to suffocate.
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
by JasonMaggini (190142) Alter Relationship on Thursday April 14, @01:25PM (#12235625)
Ah, to be that naive again....*
without clicking |parent| i thought that you were talking about the idea of a corporation building a moonbase anytime soon very naive(because it is impossible in the short term future, how about we get private corps to build even launch vehicles on their own..).
Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... (Score:1, Insightful)
What you've got at Mars is the potential for a small base that will forever be completely dependant on Earth for supplies. It's water-poor, the dust is an extreme health hazard, there's no significant atmosphere to protect you from solar radiation or run internal combustion engines in.
Re:Taxes (Score:3, Insightful)
If your estate is worth less than 1.5 million dollars there is no estate tax. I realize that 1.5 mil doesn't go as far as it used to, but would still enable a dependant to retire to an upper middle class lifestyle upon receiving this inheritance.
And when it comes down to it, an inheritance is income. Should this income be excluded from taxation? If so why? The only argument I have heard on this is that it has already has been taxed (the "unfair double taxation" argument), when it was earned by the deceased. But this argument doesn't hold water. Would you say that one should not pay income tax on one's salary because that money is paid from the income of the organization that employees one; that money was taxed when it was income of the employer (Oh no! double taxation). The simple fact is that money circulates, it gets used repeatedly, if money was not taxed repeatedly, the government would, literally, have zero income. And while we might disagree on the needed level of government services that we should be taxed to fund, I think we can all acknowledge that some level of funding is necessary...
Is there another reason that it should be excluded that I am unaware of?
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
We're broke.
Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure that a Mars colony could become self-sustaining, but it could get a *lot* closer to that than the moon. Either the moon or Mars would be a far better place to launch rockets from than Earth, as you have less gravity to fight, but still enough to avoid the hassles of 0G construction.
Plus, smash enough comets into Mars and it would retain an atmousphere for quite some time. The moon is a lost cause for terraforming.
Re:Not to nitpick, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
An inheritance is income. Income is generally taxed in the US.
Re:Taxes (Score:1, Insightful)
If they really intend to leave it to their children, they go through Estate Planning, set up trusts, and avoid estate taxes. The silver spoon tax really only kicks in badly when someone is about to inherit huge amounts of wealth without the previous owner having arranged its redistribution effectively.
Re:Dammit, skip the moon, go to Mars... (Score:3, Insightful)
We can barely keep a simple space station in orbit with a couple of astronauts, let alone a full orbital construction bay for spacecraft.
"What you've got in the moon is the potential for a small base that will forever be completely dependant on Earth for supplies."
And what of Mars? I suppose we'll just plant some seeds, spread a little water and have a full fledge hdroponics garden.
The fact is it takes a lot more than water and dirt to make the supplies necessary for human planetary colonization.
"It's water-poor, the dust is an extreme health hazard, there's no atmosphere to protect you from solar radiation or run internal combustion engines in."
Aside from the martian dust being less toxic, how is this any different from Mars?
"Unless you're there to harvest H3, there's no point in being there."
That would be until precious metals or heavy elements were discovered to reside relatively close to the surface. Or if we ever needed another source of titanium, the moon would be it.
And let's not forget that the moon has 1/6 the gravity of Earth. Using the possible water stores that reside at the poles, this makes an ideal launch platform.
Not to mention the lack of atmosphere would be great for all sorts of astronomical purposes.
Basically, you don't know enough about the moon to state whether or not a base there would be fruitless. And why is Mars more likely to not be fruitless? Is there proven resources there?
"If you're planning on going to Mars, it's worse than a wasted step -- it's not a good financial move, it's not a good place to practice techniques for Mars and it's a far more hostile environment."
Potentially, all exploration is a wasted financial step. There are no guarentees that any risk will pay off, which is why it is called a risk.
And how is the moon not a good place to practice for Mars? Mars has almost no atmosphere (and what it does have is comprised of carbon monoxide), has a 1/4 gravity of Earth (the moon has a 1/6), has a negligible magnetic field and is very cold (just like the moon). As an added bonus, Mars has planet-wide sandstorms which blocks the sun for days.
Both environments are hostile. That's why it so difficult for us to live there.
"That's why we're no closer to Mars now than we were then."
We're no closer to Mars because of physical, biolgical, logistical and psychological hurldes that we haven't cleared yet. We can't get a fscking space station together in the span of a decade, let alone build an all out orbital construction platform for building space craft. There are few countries that even have the capabilities to put satellites into orbit. Building an orbital space dock is orders of magnitude more difficult than a simple space station. Not to mention the sheer amount of money it would take to orbit and maintain the whole damn thing. Then you've got to deal with the fact that a group of humans will be packed in like sardines for a minimum 12-month round trip, and all the supplies that will entail. And the fact that said humans will be exposed to a far harsher environment just trying to get there is another matter. Just getting to Mars would be an achievement.
"The fastest, easiest and cheapest way to get to Mars is to skip things like the moon and on-orbit assembly and to use heavy lift vehicles directly from earth."
The fastest, easiest, cheapest way to get to Mars is to wait for us to get a better grip on interplanetary technologies and there's no better target for this than the moon. Whatever we can do for our jaunts there, we "should" be able to scale up. Even if the moon contains "nothing useful", it would at least be good target to practice with.
"Use as much existing off-the-shelf tech as you can..."
I agree with this.
"... and then launce opposition missions to spend large amounts of time on the Martian surface with the specific objective of finding a good
Re:Finance: Money for Moon Base Unknown (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) Before 1992, when the debt is dramatically increasing (second derivitive greater than 0)
(2) Between 1992 and 2000, when the debt is increasing, but the rate of increase slows every year (second derivitive less than 0). In fact, the debt is nearly constant between 1999 and 2000. But this was not a trend confined to the late 90's (dot com era), it started dramatically in 1992.
(3) After 2000, when the debt again shoots up dramatically (perhaps exponentially).
It is impossible to look at that data honestly and say that it is not correlated with the president.
Estate tax (Score:3, Insightful)