Asteroid Missions May Replace Lunar Base Plans 237
An anonymous reader alerts us to a story about efforts to modify the United States' space exploration plans to focus on asteroid missions rather than a lunar base. Scientists, astronauts, and former NASA division directors will be meeting next month to develop an alternative to the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration. We have previously discussed the possibility of a manned asteroid mission. Quoting:
"Numerous planetary managers told Aviation Week & Space Technology they now fear a manned Moon base and even shorter sorties to the Moon will bog down the space program for decades and inhibit, rather than facilitate, manned Mars operations--the ultimate goal of both the Bush and alternative visions. The first lunar sortie would be flown by about 2020 under the Bush plan. If alternative-vision planners have their way, the mission could instead be flown to an asteroid in about 2025."
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Perfection is difficult. But George W Bush is as close to a perfect fool as I want to see in my lifetime in charge of any major country.
In any case, the reason for going to the Asteroids instead of the Moon is that it is a probably a more effective way to spend money. We've been to the moon. What major unanswered questions do we have about the moon? None th
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You don't remember Jimmy Carter, do you?
Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
George W Bush is many things. But he is not a fool.
I agree with you, I don't think he's a fool, or that he's stupid. I've also defended his verbal gaffs, similar to the way you do -- I don't care about speechmaking, I care about results.
So, speaking as a Republican, what the hell *is* wrong with him? Is it arrogance? Hubris? I really can't defend much of what he's done. He's allowed spending like a drunken sailor. The war has been so totally mismanaged I literally can't believe it ("Wait, you mean we weren't keeping people there after we cleared out the town ALL ALONG?? WTF?") The idiotic waffling on what torture is or isn't. That supreme court nomination that even Rush Limbaugh couldn't stomach. The arrogant dismissals of Europe.
Again, I don't think he's a fool -- that's media created. But based on results, you can't conclude that he's anything but stunningly incompetent, and I don't understand where it all went so wrong. He had such grand opportunities at the start of his presidency, and it was all pissed away.
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I didn't know those were very different. The "fool" part is in not realizing/admitting you are in over your head and either listen to experts or bail.
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This has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to with knowing about your limits - and caring about them. He has, despite knowing better, done a large number of things that he shouldn't have; I refuse to believe that he didn't know that he was lying about Iraq, that he didn't know that he alienated all America's allies etc.
The only hypothesis I can offer for his stupidity is "blind faith": the kind of religious faith that says "close your eyes and ears
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There is no evidence whatsoever for that. I thought his dad was reasonably OK. But the kid is a disaster. I thought that long before Katrina and before the Main Stream Media media started grumbling. Look at his record. With the exception of Tsunami relief he has done not one single significant thing right. Not One. It's a remarkable record of duplicity, incompetence and stupidity. (To be fair, he did manage to get reasonably honest elections conducted in
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That may or may not be the case, but I'm more worried about him going forward. He's about as much risk to liberty as GWB has proved -- he's certainly pushed enough bills that severely cut into free speech, for example (the McCain-Feingold "campaign reform" bill among others).
I'm just asking for more groupthink downmods, but (Score:2)
Yes. There are legitimate criticisms of GWBush. Some of your listings are among them. (Others, like the state of the dollar, are only incidentally related - there, it's the culmination of a long-standing trend, and criticisms of Greenspan would be more accurate than those of Bush).
P.S. Original poster gets + Insightfuls. I get - Offtopics and - Overrateds. I'll admit to Offtopicness, but I suspect that the moderation was not, in fact, applied for Offtopicness so much as Disagreeingness and that some of the
the dog ate the middle of my comment (Score:2)
Your criticism, however, is orthogonal to the point that I was making. It's not that "Bush rocks!!!" ... just that he's not the drooling idiot that so many people
like to pretend he is in their intellectual/political masturbation exercises.
I just wish people could take a step back from the constant war of agenda-pushing
every now and again.
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Re:So... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Moon will certainly be useful someday - for mining, for energy collection, for tourism, for pure science...but it isn't a useful stop on the way to Mars, nor has it ever been. We've looked at the Moon in recent years for two reasons, both interrelated: first, the big contractors (Lockheed, Boeing, Raytheon, etc.) figure they can bleed us for the Moon and increase their profits before ever beginning the Mars project. Second, the U.S., and humanity in general, suffers from acute myopia and timidity.
We can go to Mars, and we can start NOW. No need for holes on the Moon into which we pour money...and more importantly, time.
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Orbit's better for canned monkeys than the moon (Score:3, Interesting)
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Gravity Well (Score:2)
A great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Asteroids would take much more time to reach, and a mission could not be quickly aborted in an emergency. The communications lag would also be significant; real time conversations would be impossible and communications might even be blocked entirely by solar conjunction for a few days at a time. These are challenges for human space flight, but not insurmountable ones.
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Re:A great idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I am unqualified to evaluate what you say and so I will not quibble with any of it. However, can I come outright and say that I honestly do not care about scientific value at this point? I want to see a moonbase. I want proof it can be done on a small planetary scale. I want to see new settlements of humans off this planet, even if only to our nearest satellite. I want to see the whole thing shown to be do'able, not for study's sake, but because it should be being done. I want to see a practical application and a first step to living elsewhere. I think a base on the moon provides that in a way that asteroid exploration just doesn't.
Cheers,
Ian
And then what? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd much rather see us put people (or robots) somewhere that actually direct us towards a future in space. Mining the asteroids has potential, not for putting anything back to Earth (too expensive), but for raw material for further space exploration, building space stations, and manufacturing specialized composi
First Steps to Living Elsewhere - Ecosystems! (Score:2)
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All we proved back in '69 is that we could mount a "touch-and-go" mission to the Moon. We never tried to put a colony, or even a long-term base there. Personally, I'd like to see us go back. I saw us put the first men on the moon, and I'd rather not die knowing that I saw it for the last time, ever.
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Re:A great idea (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, that's a rather poor engineering approach. Few if any asteroids are likely to have the tensile strength to be reliable when spun up to the 1/2 g or so that you'd want. Once you were settled down, suddenly the whole thing would bust up and go flying off in all directions. Actually, you probably wouldn't get a chance to settle down; filling it with air would probably produce a catastrophic failure before you even moved in.
The practical approach would be to mine an asteroid for raw materials, and use them to construct the sort of artificial "habitat" that sci-fi writers have been describing for decades. They'd probably be similar in size and shape to a lot of asteroids, but they'd be structurally sound.
Actually, some writers have suggested a sort of compromise: hollow out an asteroid, construct a structurally-sound habitat in the interior, and leave a few meters of rock as shielding from cosmic rays, incoming meteoroids, etc. But this is really just the same. The asteroid would contribute nothing to the structure except shielding. You could do the same by constructing the habitat, and then bolting on a thick layer of the leftover slag from the mining operation. The result would look like an asteroid, but wouldn't be one in any meaningful sense.
But you don't want to just hollow out an asteroid and start it spinning. You want to live in a habitat with a strong, solid structure. And that won't be found in nature; we'll have to build it.
(Others have suggested that it'd be better to mine comets. They tend to have lots of ice and gases, and those are very useful if you want to grow food. The problem is that the inner solar system has lots of asteroids but not very many comets. And the visiting comets tend to be in orbits that are expensive to get to. The closest asteroids with ice are around Jupiter.)
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Well, how we do in low gravity is an open question. What's our data, a half dozen experiments for a few days a piece surrounded by longer stretches of free fall?
But making the assumption that we don't do well in low gravity, the Moon is as bad as it gets. One sixth gravity is low enough that any negative physiological effects are sure to arise, but high enough that you can't trivially use centripetal force to simulate higher g
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...I honestly do not care about scientific value at this point? I want to see a moonbase. I want proof it can be done on a small planetary scale. I want to see new settlements of humans off this planet, even if only to our nearest satellite. I want to see the whole thing shown to be do'able, not for study's sake, but because it should be being done. I want to see a practical application and a first step to living elsewhere...
Cheers,
Ian
How many times did you say 'I want...' in your post? Honestly, if this doesn't sum up the American mentality, I don't know what does. Me me me me me me me me me... Try opening your mind long enough to realize that A, the world doesn't revolve around you, and B, you should leave the decisions on scientific research to scientists. What makes you think that we need 'proof' of something that man will undoubtedly do well after you're dead? Why spend a huge amount of resources to make you happy, when all we
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I'm British.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:A great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Another post sets it out clearly - this one [slashdot.org]. What is the goal? To my mind, the goal is colonisation. If that is the goal, actions which delay this is in favour of a different goal are to be considered counterproductive.
Now, you may well state that your goal doesn't match mine. That's fine, and fully understood. However, unless someone actually states what they want out of the research and what their end goal is then no progress towards it will be made. The thing to do is to define what "it" actually is, and that's what my post was about.
For me, I want to see efforts towards a moon base as it provides definitive proof that it is possible to live off the Earth. I'm aware of dependencies such as provisions and potentially even energy coming in the form of supplies from the Earth, but until we try it we'll never really know. My hope is that some of the solutions to those problems will be found after we're there - I'm a believer in proximity to the problem helping to focus minds, the "necessity is the mother of invention" situation.
And that's that. It's purely a statement of position by myself - I value progress towards an off-Earth settlement as being of greater value than increased understanding of asteroids. That's all the "I want" stuff was - statement of position. Not a waah waah waah give it to me now-type thing (and where's my flying car?), but a statement of what I believe the end goal should actually be.
Cheers,
Ian
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How many times did you say 'I want...' in your post? Honestly, if this doesn't sum up the American mentality, I don't know what does. Me me me me me me me me me... Try opening your mind long enough to realize that A, the world doesn't revolve around you, and B, you should leave the decisions on scientific research to scientists. What makes you think that we need 'proof' of something that man will undoubtedly do well after you're dead? Why spend a huge amount of resources to make you happy, when all we need is scientific progress in the areas that make the most sense today. Namely, sending out robotic explorers in our place. People have to learn to accept the FACT that we will not know everything, discover everything, and conquer everything in their life times.
The only problem I see here is that he seems to be wanting to do this with Other Peoples' Money. We shouldn't leave important decisions to other people whether they be scientists or some other profession. If the science truly is important, they'll be able to justify it. If it's not, they'll just have to whine about how underfunded they are. Finally, there's no reason to use our limitations as an excuse for procrastination.
Re:A great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Dear asshole,
Americans are paying for it, so I'd say what we want matters a fair deal. And in this instance, the original poster was saying that he would prefer that we do the initial work of building a permanent presence on the Moon. In fact, so would I. I am more interested in starting that work now, using the money that *I* am providing, then on the scientific exploration of asteroids, given the choice. Sadly for the scientists, they will have to do a lot of convincing in order for me to prioritize their desires for knowledge over my desire for a permanent settlement on a second Solar body. They can always start their own asteroid-exploring scientific foundation, if they have troubles with the priorities I set for them. Or they can ask for both: I would in fact be quite willing to open my wallet if I could directly support their work. But I can't, they are SOL, and should get back to doing what I'm paying them to do.
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I want humans to leave this rock, I think the only way to do it is to make space profitable. As soon as there is profit to be had, good luck stopping people from doing it. Once we're out there doing something profitable en-mass I think the other goals that people have of scientific research and romantic notions of colonisation will follow. I believe however that the quality of life can be best enhanced by making a profit from space rath
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Slightly greater than 2000 m/sec to land/take-off from lunar orbit. Rather less then 2000 m/sec to enter/leave lunar orbit.
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Asteroids ... have considerably more scientific value than the moon.
That's debatable, but to the extent it is true we should be sending unmanned probes to the asteroids, not expensive manned missions. Besides, manned missions really don't have much to do with science.
The moon is much more like Mars than any little near Earth asteroid. Before we go to Mars we'll need to learn how to live there for several months, and constructing a base on the moon is a great way to gain that knowledge. It's far enough away and a similar enough environment to require similar engineer
No it isn't... get the facts straight. (Score:2)
Given that there is at least a manned base, and both (earth and moon) have rockets prepared and ready to go, then it is FAR easier and less resource-intensive to send a mission from the moon than from earth. All your spouting about delta-v does not cha
Asteroid misions are important (Score:2)
zap through atmosphere everyday.
There are dozens of large asteroids which pass pretty close http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ [nasa.gov]
Mining? (Score:4, Interesting)
For anyone that hasn't heard of him, I'd strongly recommend you check out Bill Stone's [ted.com] TED talk. The whole thing is pretty cool, but its the last chapter in the video thats really amazing.
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A little sad (Score:2)
But it's a little sad, because it really is incredibly cool that we can put a man on the freaking moon, and I was rather looking forward to seeing them start doing it again.
Re:A little sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A little sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A little sad (Score:4, Insightful)
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Don't you think that the far longer distance to the asteroids make the overhead of a human presence on the trip there somewhat bigger, compared to a trip to the moon?
Communication delays are important. Sending a signal to the moon takes around a second, making it feasible to use telepresence to explore the moon. Send up something like a solar powered Asimo or two and it can stay up there permanently and be controlled by scientists on the ground 24 hours a day. This is a lot cheaper than a real human. Once you get much further, realtime control is no longer feasible and so having scientists and technicians on the spot is a lot more useful.
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Further, I think advanced robotics is clearly one of those areas that could use some public funding to get through some of the early extremely expensive hard stuff that keeps out large scale private investment. What better (and more exciting) way to do that than with a moon bas
Re: Scientific value (Score:2)
Isn't there value to learning how to commoditize "it nearly killed us last time, now it's only $10,000,000."
Sounds fine to me (Score:2, Interesting)
* Learning how to manage NEOs in case of the ultimate nightmare scenario
* Applying and extending our experience in microgravity
* Potential to access resources far easier than on the moon (metals, water, oxygen)
* Returnable to earth orbit for building an orbital industrial infrastructure
* Easier to build completely reusable vehicles a possibility
* Nasa guys clearly read Stephen Baxter, Kim Stanley Robinson, and have played Eve Online.
Both missions has their merits (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem with an unmanned asteroid mission is that it may require some human decision from time to time - but normally there is no problem with time delays there. Not much that's in a hurry on an asteroid unless it's heading for Earth. Just put the robot to sleep for a while and recharge the batteries. Keep in mind that there may have to be different robots there compared to the robots we have on Mars.
The thing that's more interesting with a permanent moon-base is that there is a possibility that a lot of the material found on the moon can be used as construction material. It will require a processing plant - and it can't be used for everything, but it's there. Much of the soil is composed from oxides - which means that you can extract oxygen. Allocation of area for growth is no big problem either. The catch is that all this may have a high cost. But what is the cost when the Chinese decides that it's their turn to go to the moon?
Infrastructure Development.... (Score:2)
And a moonbase makes as much sense as the "International Space Station".
The REAL driver for developing the infrastructure remains Space Based Solar.
http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf [nss.org]
If we started TODAY, in 50 years we'd have all the pieces. Sustainable, Renewable, Non-Polluting Energy; Heavy Lift to GEO; And the ability to deploy a workforce to GEO to do
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Even so, you have to be careful because you just might find out the hard way that This place has no atmosphere! [barnesandnoble.com]
Good! (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, that's not gonna happen any time soon. At best we'd learn lessons that could be applied in the *future* to provide offsetting economic return. Manned missions are dismally expensive both from an economic and scientific perspective. That hasn't changed much since the 60's.
In fact, the reason I'd lean toward a moonbase over a manned asteroid visit is that the moonbase provides human
The Moon has some advantages (Score:3, Interesting)
There is also no real weather problems in terms of wind, rain, snow etc. Yeah, it's a harsh environment, but it holds no surprises, other than the occasional solar outburst (serious enough though).
And the killer feature is that it's so close.
Short term vs. longer termed solution (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed (Score:2)
There is a bit of an energy problem, in that it has to be stored for long periods of darkness. But when
What's the Goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a Moonbase!
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The moonbase will happen, sooner or later (provided that space exploration itself doesn't come to a halt through some unforeseen event)
Nuclear war, asteroid impact, supervolcano caldera collapse, peak oil or other global depression, epidemic, massive environmental collapse, alien invasion, one world government, humans devolve into vegetables (grown on a coach, of course), bad outcome to the Singularity.
but it is unlikely that the US will really be the country to pull it off. We'll either become the Portugal of space exploration, or we'll ultimately work in cooperation with other space-faring nations.
The difference of course is that the US outspends any other space faring nation by a considerable amount (last I checked, known US government spending on space was 35% of all spending on space, then add in US businesses and perhaps some
How about both? (Score:2)
Sounds Good (Score:2, Funny)
hitch a ride on an asteroid (Score:2)
Great Idea (Score:2)
1) You could attach probes to passing by roids and then detach when they're about to pull back towards the sun. Saves on fuel and gets the probe further out our system.
2) If we could make lots of inexpensive tracking satellites we could track lots of roids. I think it would give us a lot of useful data as well as give us automatic collision warnings.
3) You could make an asteroid into a manned spaceship by landing on it. Why bother with the moon when an aste
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Those are some whacky orbital mechanics you've got there.
In order to attach a probe to an asteroid you'd have to rendezvous with it, which means you'd be in the same orbit as it is anyway. No fuel saved.
You can make an asteroid into a manned spaceship (well, one that can't maneuver much) by landing a spaceship on it. Or you could just kee
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That depends on how resilient the probe is... Just put the probe in the path of a passing asteroid, and enjoy the near-instant acceleration to 40km/s or more. It's probably best to try it a few times before you do it with humans inside.
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Case For Mars (Score:4, Informative)
In the book, "The Case for Mars" the author, also the creator of the Mars Direct Plan, argues skipping the moon all-together and go straight to Mars. This is because Mars is full of resources that could be used to make a self sustaining colony, whereas a Lunar base requires everything to come from Earth. Differences between a Lunar Base and the ISS? The Lunar base is on the Moon, and on the Moon you can do geology and astronomy particularly well; on ISS, there's not much useful science.
I'm not sure cruising to asteroids is the answer, but at least there are probably lots of interesting and diverse resources, and the missions could be made lightweight(no lander required). The geology of Asteroids is probably alot different than the Moon's because there was no volcanic past or differentiation. But my opinion is, cut to the chase, go to Mars, its the most interesting thing out there.
What exictes me (Score:2)
DOD will push back (Score:4, Interesting)
But DOD can't run a successful occupation (Score:2)
They should go to the asteroids, (Score:3, Insightful)
A number of Earth-crossing asteroids are easier to get to, energetically, than the Moon. (Apollo could certainly have
reached some asteroids, which was pointed out at the time, and a lot more Earth-crossing asteroids are known now.) The trip times tend to be long,
so you need to be prepared for long duration flights (which is not that different from being prepared for long duration lunar visits, and is also
true of any trip to Mars). And, you don't need anything like a lunar module. (With most asteroids, and certainly all of the Earth crossing ones, you will "dock" with
them more than "land" on them, the gravity is that week.) The weight saved from the lunar module can be used for provisions instead.
There is plenty of science to do, and if we are ever going to economically exploit the materials in space, we are much more likely to
do it with asteroids than with either the Moon or Mars.
The first manned mission (Score:2, Funny)
1) Bruce Willis
2) Ben Affleck (Hey, send Matt Daemon too, sure it has nothing to do with the movie, but I think he deserves to be in space)
3) A sketchy guy (Who I can't remember the name of and don't care) and some big black guy for racial equality (Who I also can't remember the name of and don't care)
Either way, this is the only way I see a mission like this succeeding.
Besides this happening,
Baby-steps, we need to start over (Score:2)
Facts:
We don't have any astronauts that have experience landing on satellites or anything other than the Earth.
The moon has a very stable orbit around the Earth
Asteroids do not have very stable orbits around the Earth
From these observations, as well as other common knowledge, I'm willing to state that it would be easier to have a Lunar mission than a mission landing on an Asteroid. Why?
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Landing on the moon is just that, landing. If you screw up you get splattered all over the landscape. The gravity is lower than Earth, but in many ways landing is more difficult because there isn't any air: no parachutes or wings.
Sounds like a plan! (Score:2)
Going to Mars via asteroid trips is a good idea because it will spend lots of money without any of those annoying technology returns and society-changing science findings to cope with. Also, nobody else will be pursu
doable; cold war (Score:4, Insightful)
One big advantage of a crewed mission to a near-earth asteroid over a crewed mission to Mars is that we simply don't have the technology to get to Mars. A transfer orbit to Mars takes 1.4 years (total round-trip time). (This is simply the period of a body in a Keplerian orbit that's tangent to the Earth's orbit at perihelion and tangent to Mars's orbit at aphelion. A spaceship isn't like a car, which takes less time to get there if you drive faster. A spaceship only thrusts with its engines in order to change its orbit.) The big unsolved scientific and engineering problem is how to keep a crew of human beings from getting exposed to unacceptable doses of radiation when they're in Earth-Mars orbital space for that long. The radiation intensity from galactic cosmic rays [wikipedia.org] is much, much higher out there than it is in Earth orbit. Feasible amounts of shielding actually make the problem worse rather than better, because of secondary radiation. According to this article [space.com], the duration of a mission to a near-earth asteroid could be 60-90 days, so it avoids this very tough, unsolved problem. There are many other aspects of a near-earth asteroid mission that are also a heck of a lot easier than a Mars mission. You don't have to land in a deep gravity well and then take off again, for one thing. If you look at the history of uncrewed Mars missions, it's pretty damn scary -- the success rate is very low, and that's for missions that don't have to take off and return to Earth, and don't have to provide life support.
The big question in my mind is what is the rational justification for government-funded crewed spaceflight at this point. There's no scientific justification; uncrewed probes give more bang for the buck. The shuttle's only mission is to go to the ISS, and the ISS's only mission is to give the shuttle somewhere to go. Thirty or forty years ago, this was all basically cold war propaganda stuff. It seems to me that the U.S. is having a hard time dealing with an unanticipated outbreak of peace. The rational thing to do would have been to continue harvesting the peace dividend, start ramping down our foreign military commitments, and let both crewed and uncrewed space exploration make the transition to the private sector. Instead we've been blundering around like idiots with our ridiculously large military, and in terms of space exploration we've been choking the scientifically productive uncrewed program by diverting the available money into extremely expensive projects like the ISS that have no rational justification.
The End of Spirit (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that fact that so many posters think this is a good idea, is terribly disheartening. If these posts are for real (and not more b.s. from the propaganda machines that now dominate our media), then it means America has lost it's Spirit. We no longer have a can-do attitude. We no longer care about going beyond ourself and pushing frontiers. We no longer see our ourselves as capable of achieving great things. In short we no longer Dream. And that...more than anything else will be our doom.
Re:The End of Spirit (Score:4, Interesting)
As an Apollo-era teenager I share my age group's frustrations that I don't have my jet car on Mars yet. Heck, we quit following the last few missions. Been there, done that. But all this smacks of back seat desperation. _IF_ by now we had created a huge space station that had learned to be self-sustaining with zero resupply/repair ferries for years, then it _might_ be reasonable to talk about multi-year manned missions around the inner solar system. But as it is, it's more than a little ugly. Sure, you'd get enough volunteers. But watching them die 30 million miles from earth because something and its backup broke is PR that would set your gamble back many years.
Been to the moon so why bother to go back? Why do we have a permanent presence in antarctica -- the favorable corn-growing season?
And, sadly, I also wonder whether this is likely to be some weird propaganda that costs nothing during any particular year of a presidency but keeps the Star Trek voter happy.
The moon? Why we can't supply ISS! (Score:3, Interesting)
There are numerous alternative architectures that can deliver the hundreds of tons of supplies you need on the lunar surface within practical budgets. But they involve direct commercial and industry involvement. Until these players are fully engaged we will not be going back to the moon in a meaningful way. Most importantly these architectures provide the foundations for going to Mars in a meaningful way. Anyone who thinks you are gonna do anything meaningful on Mars with a handful of crew is simply wrong. It requires a bare-bones crew of at least 90 to support three science teams of 6 each. If you want confirmation look at Antarctic operations to get yourself calibrated. Furthermore on any real Mars mission at least part of the crew that goes does not come back on the first return opportunity. They are there for at least two cycles and transfer tasks and responsibilities to the second cycle crew etc etc. It is getting used to not coming back for 5 years that is perhaps one of the most important psychological barriers we must cross. The moon is a good place to start this- staying there permanently creates an enormous improvement in efficiency. You can finally forget about the retreat to Earth as the only safe option. Worth nearly 3000 m/sec delta V.
So the moon is worthy goal- but it is the practice of developing self-sustaining colonies that is the real barrier.
V is for Vision (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly is the vision? The founding document [nasa.gov] [large PDF warning] for the "VSE" lists goals and strategies, but no vision of what the goals and strategies are meant to accomplish. A vision involving the Moon could be "create a new civilization on the Moon that might do for the U.S. what the New World colonies did for the Old World." (you can snicker but that is an example).
"Go to the Moon and Mars" is not a vision. It's an strategy.
"Build launchers and spacecraft based on current infrastructure & technology" is an implementation of that strategy.
Again... what is the vision?
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Re:Bush Screws Up Everything He Touches (Score:4, Interesting)
Manned asteroid missions have little if anything to do with asteroid deflection strategies. If you want to keep the Earth safe from big nasty dinosaur-killers, you spend money on tracking every Earth crossing Asteroid in the sky, not on sending people to 1 or 2 of them. Early detection of potential dangers makes any deflection strategy (almost certainly unmanned, despite what your favourite movies might tell you) more plausible
The purpose of visiting asteroids is looking for something to mine or doing science to investigate the origins of the solar system.
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It's not totally useless. For example, a possible strategy to deal with an astroid headed towards Earth might be to land on it and strategically plant explosives on it to break it up. It could prove helpful if we've already praticed landing
Has Nothing To Do With It (Score:2)
Re:So it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
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Last time I checked our little worldy conflicts have been going on for thousands of years, and that is most likely not going to change for thousands more.
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For one thing, no matter what the conditions here at home, we need a frontier. Not want, but need. We MUST have one.
Second, a lot of people do not seem to realize that space exploration and related technologies have actually paid for itself many times over in terms of science that affects our everyday lives. Microwaves, teflon, satellites, lasers, etc. You might not be aware how those things are us
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It is NOT about excitement! (Score:2)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 [wikipedia.org]
Asteroids have hit the moon therefore it's hard to say what else is on the moon. No one has drilled/mined very deep.