NASA's New Mission to the Moon 283
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"
Good question (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Good question (Score:5, Informative)
Some directly related to habitation of the Moon and exploration of Mars -- long duration life support, techniques for harvesting lunar resources, etc, -- and some of the more "pure research" category. Lunar farside is probably one of the most radio-quiet places in the solar system, with 2000 miles of rock shielding it from Earth, so it'd be great for radiotelescopes, for example.
Also a good place for doing large scale experiments that might have, uh, adverse environmental impact if something goes wrong.
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Re:Good question (Score:5, Interesting)
The nice thing about the moon is that if accidentally release a huge cloud of radiation we just get a green moon instead of a black moon when it isn't lit by the sun, whereas on earth we would have hundreds of miles of radioactive wasteland that could otherwise be a nice place to live. I mean it would still kinda suck long term if we teraformed the moon (in the long term), but it would still not be nearly as bad as on earth.
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No Good Reasons (Score:2)
2020: robotics will be much further along. Probes and robots are better and cheaper than humans and the case only gets stronger with time.
BioSphere: a failed project in habitation. More work along these lines would be a better use of money. The low gravity issues can largely be tested remotely if need be. Building a spinning space module for the space station for testing moon gravity would
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The government pays pioneers to open up frontiers that are then exploited by commercial entities. It's been this way for thousands of years. Why should it change now?
NASA's mandate (Score:3, Informative)
I would say that NASA's mandate, as a government agency, is whatever the people democratically choose for it to do. More tangibly, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 [nasa.gov], which founded NASA, declares:
Yes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yes! (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't sure if you knew that or not.
They fly around in the sky.
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-dZ.
it's a joke, people (Score:5, Funny)
What do you mean "going back"? That assumes we were there a first time.
Updated Technology (Score:5, Funny)
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Just grab the guys that film the Star Trek TV shows, B5, the Star Wars movies,
Yikes. (Score:4, Funny)
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and we'll all laugh about its shrunken rocket.
It's also a dress rehearsal for Mars... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a largely non-obvious reason for using the same basic vehicle for both mission sets.
Reversal of opinion in the internet age (Score:4, Insightful)
We have a lot more information than the last 3 moon attempts. Time was the only answer you could know about right and wrong was what you could think of on your own based on what you saw in the sky and how much spare cash you had.
Now the answers for everything are downloadable. You don't need to come up with your own answers because the internet has the answers for you. The change in where our information comes from has changed our opinions.
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The problem is someone has to put those answers on the internet in the first place. Information doesn't magically appear on the internet, the grunt work still has to be done. Hopefully people would realize that...
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which is has, repeatedly and thoroughly, thus the results are now so common and well-agreed upon that they're easily available on the Internet.
With apologies to Kennedy: (Score:4, Funny)
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Apollo was a Good Design (Score:2)
The original capsule was remarkably resilient and well-protected. I'm glad to see they're reusing the design and not trying for something brand new. If Burt Rutan wants to have new systems, he can finance them himself.
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Before someone calls this a waste (Score:5, Informative)
Deep space scientific observation is nice, but until we have a self-sustaining colony off of earth, manned space technology should be our #1 priority.
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-Eric
Probably won't change your mind... (Score:2)
NASA budget [wikipedia.org]: $16.8 billion (2007)
US Military budget [wikipedia.org]: $532.8 billion (2007)
I'll admit that the numbers were actually closer than I expected. OTOH, when it comes to the military, there's the budget and then there's what's actually spent. (Yes, this can be true with NASA, too, but to a much smaller extent.)
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Is space technology more important than feeding the poor? Curing cancer and AIDS? Switching to renewable energy sources? World-fracking-peace?
Lets first get our stuff together on this rock before we go out and spread the blessings of humanity to other rocks. Who knows, we might even become worth saving.
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Yes, yes, and yes. The problems you mention have no chance of destroying all life in the universe (to our knowledge). Keeping all life on one planet does have that chance.
Life itself is more important that starving orphans. There, I said it.
Price Tags (Score:3, Interesting)
it's hard to see the pitfalls so far ahead, but I worry that once we establish a base on the moon, we might get bogged down there.
I thought for the moment there, is he was talking back some foolhardy contemporary military adventure.
I wonder what he meant by this, how could we get "bogged" down on the moon?
Aside: Anybody know what the ROM price tag for an established moon based is compared to say the price tag for the Iraqi war?
Saturn V... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sextant? (Score:3, Funny)
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in the event that the navigation computers fail or you lose power or something, you could presumablely use the sextant, a chronometer (a common wristwatch is likely accurate enough), known astronomical constants, proper charts and a bit of math to figure out where you are and how to get where you're going.
or maybe i'm thinking too much and it's just for good luck or something.
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Yes, but she's ah, occupied at the moment.
Re:Sextant? (Score:5, Informative)
Because Aldrin previously demonstrated that you could maneuver in orbit using a sextant if your computer failed? On one Gemini flight he used the sextant to perform the rendevouz rather than the computer and radar, if I remember correctly.
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If the on-board computer smokes you would need the sextent to measure your orientation.
Re-Entry 'skipping' (Score:5, Informative)
They also had a couple of failures - and the failures/sucesses were dotted pretty evenly across the attempts. Zond was a percursor to a Soviet attempt to perform an Apollo 8 flyby to steal NASA's thunder - in fact, it was the Zond tests that lead to Apollo 8 being a lunar mission rather than a high earth orbit mission so as to steal the Russians thunder!
Before the budget cuts of 65/66 and the Fire, NASA planned on as many as *6* manned flights in LEO and an indeterminate number of lunar flights before committing to a landing attempt. Those budget cuts, the time lost after the fire, and the growing realization that the Soviets might be able to trump them forced their hand.
So much for the myth of Apollo-era NASA being the brave and bold agency they are so often portrayed as of late. Until forced, they were just as conservative as they are today.
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What you described sounds more like political pressure for NASA to trump the Russians.
Without such external pressures, people tend to be very conservative when lives are on the line.
Honest question (Score:2, Insightful)
Iceland vs New York City. (Score:4, Interesting)
The resources to build an entire civilization exist on/around Mars. The moon is a fossil world.
We can learn some from Luna, and probably take the first steps to colonization there, but the real action is going to be on Mars. There is a lot of planet-specific engineering that needs to be done for either location. Lunar spacesuits won't work on Mars, there will be huge differences in sealing technology and energy generation (you can burn silane as internal combustion on Mars, for instance). We can learn as much in high orbit or at a NEO about colonizing Mars as we can on the Moon. Almost all technical development for any near-term colonization is going to be developed on Earth, though.
If I had several Billion $$ right now, I'd commision a Russian-Bigelow spacecraft for a human mission to Phobos or Deimos. This is the ideal target for early development, energetically close to Earth, resource rich and within telepresence range of Mars. We can mine water and ship it back to LEO using technology we have now, or nearly. Russian companies have decades worth of human habitat experience, Bigelow would provide the main living space, custom tools purchased from best providers. The project would mine water and provide realtime control for robots throughout cis-Mars.
L5 (Score:3, Insightful)
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First, and most importantly, it provides a (relatively) close-by testing ground for requisite technologies. Many tasks that people take for granted are completely untested in such exotic environments as the moon and mars. In-situ resource utilization, for example, requires mining and processing operations which have no terrestrial equivalent. The problems present in off-earth mining a
One more benefit: Science Fiction Resurrection (Score:4, Interesting)
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David Feintuch (the Hope series),
David Weber (Honor Harrington),
Alastair Reynolds (the Revelation Space universe),
Stephen R. Donaldson (the Gap series),
Robert L. Forward (various),
Vernor Vinge,
Walter Jon Williams (Dread Empire's Fall trilogy)
Are all (relatively) recent authors you should check out if you haven't. It's not a scratch on the golden age of SF, of course, but there are still decent space SF books being written. I've also heard good things about Iain M. Banks and Peter F. H
ZEN: The Moment Is Passed (Score:2)
2020, we should be on Mars, not the Moon! (Score:2)
they built a shuttle and sunk all sorts of money into OLD technology. Let face it, they didn't innovate. I would have loved to
see a spacecraft that took off like a jet. So imagine, instead of a rocket liftoff you take off like a jet, accelerate into space.
Instead it's a gliding brick that' soon to be retired. Now a manned Moon mission is deemed a worthy trip again? If we were to
tunnel into the moon
what a difference 40 years makes (Score:3, Insightful)
Flash forward to 2007. Presumably, we know how to get to the moon, since we've done it before. Computing and aerospace technology have both advanced considerably in the intervening 46 years. But now, instead of getting there in less than 10 years, they want to take 13?
Something is seriously wrong with this situation.
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Yup. The Taleban/Al Qaida don't have a space program.
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Sorry but no, will never happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
But manned spaceflight out of the orbit of the earth is in fact dead and over, forever, or if not, for the next 100+ years. No on
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Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but there are other benefits. Learning how to colonize space would be a biggie in my book. Besides, if we can't go to the moon, we don't stand a chance at going to Mars, Europa, Titan, or possibly beyond our solar system. The moon is the first step.
Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? Colonizing the moon is a drastically different undertaking from colonizing Mars. The moon is essentially a vacuum. It's cold. It has no useful resources to speak of (and no, He3 won't be useful any time soon). 1/6th Earth's gravity. And it's fairly close.
Meanwhile, Mars has water. And abundance of minerals. A thin atmosphere containing useful gases. A surface temperature that actually breaks the freezing point occasionally. Double the gravity of the moon. And it's so far away that getting there has proved to be a surprisingly difficult undertaking.
Honestly, the idea that colonization of the Moon will tell use anything useful about colonizing Mars is, frankly, silly. The methods that would be used for the two projects are *completely* different. Meanwhile, we can't even build a self-contained biosphere on *Earth*! Maybe we should try tackling that drastically simpler task before we start planning Moon bases.
Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let's see. 1/6th gravity might be nice for some things. It does equate to 1/6th the difficulty in managing heavy objects. Vacuum is, amazingly enough, common for many likely working environments in space. We need practice; better to do it around a developed moonbase with medical facilities, manufacturing and so on than around some asteroid that has a lot of something we want, plus vacuum. It's not necessarily "cold", by the way, it is in vacuum, which is something else entirely. There is plenty of energy falling on its surface from which heat can be gathered. And power. In any case, it isn't like you're going to lie on the surface naked. Another thing is it is closer than anything else, and once we have a base there, going other places is a lot less costly -- launching from a 1/6th gravity well is much less costly than launching from a 1G gravity well. Not just into space in general, but to Mars, to Earth orbit, moon orbit, everywhere. There have been many suggestions about how to mine the moon's resources and get worthwhile products from them. Once there and we get a little practice, I have little doubt there would be more of the same. If materials can be obtained to build spacecraft, for instance, then we're WAY better off with a moonbase. It's a great place for telescopes, too. And RF research. And vacations (I'd love to have a 1/6th G environment to practice martial arts in, or to have sex in, or even to just turn backflips in.) As for creating a self-contained biosphere, you know what they say about necessity being the mother of invention.
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How about spending the money learning about earth and settling the Climate change debate rather than wasting trillions of dollars over a pipe dream.
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I don't know where you got your information, but the moon has - at some point in it's orbit - the same relative velocity as the earth with regard to mars. This is unavoidable, as the moon orbits the earth, if you'll recall. Launching at the appropriate time will ensure no loss with regard to the moon's orbit. However, with 1/6th the gravity well, t
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I personally doubt that will be viable for a while, but thinking long term moon launches will certainly be a "reason."
All the same, I'm personally of the opinion that mars would make bette
Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:4, Interesting)
One time, yes you do. But you also need to do that for a shot straight from earth. So that's pretty much a wash, agreed? The problem comes from multiple moon ->mars shots.
Certainly you can, and yes there is. Think about the basics. What is a space drive, generally speaking? It is a device that expels [something] in the opposite direction from that which you desire to go. And how do we get some of the highest exhaust velocities we've ever attained? Ion drives. Electricity. Ion drives expel stuff [any stuff that will hold a charge] using electricity. And is there electricity on the moon? Think solar panels, and the answer, of course, is yes. Right now, Ion drives are limited in thrust, but they are *very* efficient. That's one useful approach, and there's nothing to say we won't improve them hugely. They're really excellent space drives because they can keep adding thrust on a continuous basis; they use less reaction mass because they can attain such a high exhaust velocity. They're low, constant thrust.
But wait... How do you get anything off the surface with a low thrust engine? You need more power than an ion drive, right? Yep. Can you do it electrically? Sure. You can use a linear accelerator. Again, purely electrical technology, and you can fling things at astounding velocities. The longer the accelerator, the more human-freindly the acceleration will be. Short tracks require high G's, and we hate that. Anyway, again, it's down to electricity and nothing else. No need to lift anything out of the earth's gravity well, once the system is running. We're doing better and better at capacitive storage, and batteries will soon fall to ultracaps, or at least, that's how it looks today. Solar panels are getting less and less expensive, and more and more efficient, and silicon... is there silicon on the moon? Yep. There is. :-)
And landing? Next, there are space elevators. We've got some really tough technical issues trying to build a space elevator on earth. The materials strength to gravity well challenge is just about at the edge of what is possible. But on the moon, this isn't at all the case. 1/6th the gravity means, pretty much anyway, 1/6th the problem. You can bring all manner of cargo up and down at absolute minimum cost and a reasonable constant energy expenditure. After all, space vessels should probably remain in space; it isn't them we want to get from here to there, it is the cargo. Space elevators are also much happier when there is no atmosphere; they just sit there. No blowing around, etc. On Mars, while the gravity is in your favor there, the atmosphere might be a little annoying. Still, it's more doable than it is here on earth.
It's like anything else. You have to spend to build the infrastructure required to get things running on their own, but once that's done, then the returns defray, and eventually eliminate, the original investment. But it doesn't have to be an infinite loop of bringing things from earth to the moon. There are plenty of creative solutions to these problems - I'm not saying they aren't problems - and in the end, there is every reason to think we can pull this off and make it work, and work well.
There are enormous amounts of natural resources out there. We should go get them. We should land and establish bases everywhere we can. We should explore, because knowledge rarely proves useless, and because a lot of us like to explore. The more resources we pull from space, the fewer we'll need to pull from the earth. Delivery of raw materials from space is pretty trivial, basically let gravity do it; the main thing, I would think, is to make them come in gently enough so as not to cook the atmosphere in the process, and avoid scattering them on impact. Water landings and gliding bodies come to mind. But that's not my area of expertise. :)
Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, maybe not fuel, but you can make all the oxidizer you could ever need, and that's the more important half.
72% by weight of a typical Kerosene/LOX [wikipedia.org] rocket engine is oxygen. And the soil/dust/regolith on the Moon is mostly oxygen [wikipedia.org]. We just need to perfect automated methods of extracting the oxygen from the soil, but that's an engineering problem, and not a showstopper.
Not exactly. You burn some fuel to bring a small amount fuel from Earth to the Moon, and don't bother to bring oxidizer. Then you combine the fuel you brought with LOX you harvested from the surface of the Moon, and launch to Mars with that. Since you're only leaving a 1/6g gravity well, you will need far less fuel to leave the moon and go to Mars than you would to leave Earth and go to Mars, assuming you left during the launch window when the Moon has a higher orbital velocity with respect to Mars than the Earth does (which happens about once a month). All this adds up to an energy savings.
Of course, this all requires some sort of infrastructure to work, like a moonbase, and that will be expensive to build. But once the infrastructure is in place, the long-term energy savings are substantial, especially if we start doing things like harvesting objects outside the Earth's gravity well for the other half of the fuel/oxidizer ratio. There's water in comets--that's a hydrogen source. Most asteroids have the same composition as Carbonaceous chontrite meteorites, which are chock full of organic compounds--these can be cracked open to collect both hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen can be burned by itself or combined with oxygen to make hydrogen peroxide (a low-energy monopropellant used in some thrusters). Nitrogen can be combined with oxygen to form dinitrogen tetroxide (a decent rocket fuel that requires an oxidizer) or with hydrogen to form hydrazine (a high-energy monopropellant). I'm sure people with more experience in chemistry and astronomy can suggest many other possibilities as well.
The bottom line is, there's lots of fuel available out in the solar system, outside the big gravity wells, and taking advantage of launching from a small gravity well using fuel harvested from other small gravity wells will result in a substantial energy savings.
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NASA will have the benefit of machinery powered by radioactive-decay powerplants (or whatever). I suspect that will give them parity with those 'failed' biospheres.
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That's the beauty of doing the Moon first. A colony on the Moon is harder than on Mars in most respects. Due to the lack of an atmosphere the sand on the Moon is some of the most abrasive stuff you'll be able to find and the lack of gravity has massi
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And there are plenty who don't. For example, this fellow [thespacereview.com] feels that "Currently, this author believes that there are few, if any, efficient reasons to use the Moon as a stepping stone for going to Mars", since "Mars is a planet with an atmosphere and resources that preclude the Moon from acting as a relevant analogue, and our current space program is quite adept at operating spacecraft in the
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I made this for Mars, but I think it still answers the question [wellingtongrey.net].
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Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, there's the lifeboat argument.
There's doing research and rehearsals for manned exploration further out. I certainly wouldn't want to venture to Mars or the asteroids without technology tested a little closer to home first.
Raw materials -- He3 (as fusion fuel) is one possibility. As a source for raw materials (silicon, aluminum, etc) for building solar powersats is another.
Astronomical research -- lunar farside is the best place in the solar system for radio telescopes, it's shielded from Earth's noise. It's also a pretty good place for telescopes at all other wavelengths, especially if there's a manned base to swap out instruments, repair cameras, etc.
A frontier. People need one, even if only a few actually pioneer it. Earth will go crazy even faster without one.
Whole books have been written on "why", a Slashdot comment isn't going to do it justice.
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Probably about as far as the inside surface of your space helmet. Ewww.
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It'd get bigger! Result!
Is the lunar surface the better investment? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even under the most dire/optimistic scenarios a lunar facility isn't gonna be much of a viable 'lifeboat' for generations yet. Indeed if things go seriously awry it's probably the most untenable place to be for any calamity except a fast-acting/highly-virulent/fatal terrestrial biohazard, and then you'd likely just get to live somewhat longer and die a premature death of a different cause. After a terrestrial catastrophe a lunar facility likely won't contribute much to future generations but an interesting monument. Rather a planet of 6 billion with a huge biosphere has so much more in the way of odd nooks & corners for refugees & resources.
Except a lunar facility is going to be markedly different then anything space-based. Significant gravity, a surface, 2 week bright/dark cycles, huge dust & debris issues; except for lack of atmosphere they're almost entirely different problem sets. A space station is certainly the better R&D environment for spacefaring development. As to Martian R&D Earth as good, and substantially cheaper/more-amenable venue then the moon offers.
Except that asteroids are probably a far better materials supply source and can be got roboticly, with their materials easier separated, refined, and then sent on to Earth in space then from the moon. Furthermore while He3 is promising we've yet to achieve fusion that could take advantage of it and those power sats would probably do as good a job with less complexity then a lunar-fueled terrestrial fusion system anyhow.
Except any manned base is going to be fouling up the local environment and require far more support then just installing spares & alternatives for everything. Again, the moon is good, space is likely better.
Because the moon is the only possible frontier? Not our oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, arctic & antarctic regions? Not more abstract frontiers like science, technology, sociology, psychology, diplomacy, etc.?
I'm honestly not trying to be contrarian but your reasons strike me more as rationalizations. Nearly all could be done better/cheaper using unmanned systems or directly in space. I'd hate to see a lunar base become another dead end like our hopelesly compromised space station, doing expensive science of minimal import or quality.
Re:Is the lunar surface the better investment? (Score:4, Insightful)
All the more reason to get started sooner rather than later, then, eh? "Okay everyone, lifeboat drill in 2025!"
Except a lunar facility is going to be markedly different then anything space-based. Significant gravity, a surface, 2 week bright/dark cycles, huge dust & debris issues; except for lack of atmosphere they're almost entirely different problem sets. A space station is certainly the better R&D environment for spacefaring development.
Right. We wouldn't go anywhere in space where there's gravity, surfaces, or dust and debris, or extremes of bright or dark. Hello? Asteroids? Mercury? Mars? The outer moons?
And while you mentioned vacuum, you left out radiation (space station orbits below the Van Allen belts), and resupply issues (space station can be abandoned on short notice if necessary).
As to Martian R&D Earth as good, and substantially cheaper/more-amenable venue then the moon offers.
Looks like you've drunk Zubrin and the Mars mafia's koolade. Camping out in the Utah desert or the Canadian arctic tells you zero about living on Mars, no matter what Zubrin and his space campers say. Hey, I've been to the Space Camp in Huntsville. Sure, it was fun, but it taught me as much about flying in Shuttle as camping on Earth tells you about Mars. Low gravity, almost no atmosphere and what there is is toxic, radiation, 20 minutes (at best) ping times, temperatures cold enough to freeze CO2, a year to resupply or evacuate, and a year in zero gee just to get there, etc, etc.
Because the moon is the only possible frontier? I said "A frontier". It happens to be the closest where there's any "there" there.
Not our oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, arctic & antarctic regions?
Perhaps you don't understand the definition of "frontier"? People already live all of those places, and routinely exploit them. Any tourist willing with a few tens of thousands to spend, tops, can go visit without being particularly uncomfortable, and return home with photos and souvenirs. True frontiers are not for tourists, they're for pioneers. You know, the guys (and gals) who find new and unusual ways to die.
As for "abstract frontiers", well, pffft. Any society -- hell, any organism -- that embraces internal frontiers while ignoring external ones is already doomed.
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But if one side can't hit back... (Score:2)
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Frankly, it sounds to me like just another round of pork from a President and party that has been damaged by the Iraq war. After all, much of the Republican base is located in states with NASA facilities (California and Maryland excepted).
Besides,
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Re:Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? (Score:4, Funny)
Couple of IFs:
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OK, I'll bite. Because one day we WILL use up the resources on this planet...and by the looks of things, that day is not that far in the future.
True, it won't happen tomorrow, or even for a number of generations, but guess what. We won't just suddenly have the ability to colonize another planet. We need
Not Necessarily (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. If we wait a few decades, we may very well be significantly more advanced in the technological prerequisites necessary for this sort of mission. For example, imagine if we had tried to do the Appolo missions during the 20's. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case. I honestly don't know enough about the technology involved
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Hell, we've done that with every single war this country has been in, why not do it with helping to ensure the future survival of our entire species?
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-Eric
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I'm not talking about terraforming mars in the next 10, 20, or even 50 years (hell the process alone could take a hundred years, if not more)
I'm talking about getting shit on the moon set up and moving outward from there...again, we need to start SOMETIME.
Besides, you know as well as I do that we are much more likely to destroy ourselves than for some massive global event...and if some massive global event
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Sounds interesting. Will we blast it using great big Saturns with tons of cash in each load, or could we use smaller payloads and larger denominations? What orbit will we put it in, and can we assume a rate of return for when we go pick it back up in 50 years?
Sorry, but blasting money into space is a stupid way to put it. Money spent on any endeavor by government gets spent right here on earth and goes right back into the economy. There may be BETTER ways to spend it, b
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This is true. However, something has to exsist (in the 'real world') to run the simulation on - and I'm pretty sure an AI that complex would also want to accomplish something 'for real'...
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Really? So, when the tens of thousands of people that would make this happen cash their paychecks, that money is launched into space? I'm betting that at least some of them actually buy houses, send their kids to college, invest in things, and maybe even start businesses. Or even if all they do is go home and play Halo and order pizza... that's still seeing the money pumped right into the good ol' terrestrial economy.
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Let me clarify: Wouldn't it be even better to subsidise something that has more tangible inherent societal benefits? People could be paid to do that instead.
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we smoke while we flip the bird (Score:5, Funny)
The boston police?
Re:Old technology but not forgotten (Score:5, Informative)
Absolutely. Duct tape was essential to saving Apollo 13, when they had to rig an adapter for the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters to the circular LM canister ports. (CM and LM were built by different contractors, each with their own design for lithium hydroxide (part of the CO2 scrubbing system) canisters.)
Also comes in handy for keeping stuff from drifting around if there's no Velcro handy. Standard equipment on every Shuttle mission.
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Either that's very subtle sarcasm you've got there... or you and others reading this aren't keeping track of 3 facts:
1. The moon is about 384,500 km from Earth.
2. Mars is about 55,000,000 km from Earth - at its closest.
3. Most importantly, the moon goes around the Earth all the time.
So... there are times where the moon is 384,500 km closer to Mars than the Earth is.
And there are times where the moon is 384,500 km further than Mars is.
And
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