Posted on 11/03/2005 10:28:48 PM PST by TheMadLurker
Happy New Year Everyone!
Starting with Irish , going through the list, all the way to Sandy and Sionnsar!
Awww!
The age of Maximum Cuteness!
How sweet!
Happy New Year to you too!!
Eaker
Happy New Year to you as well!
I hope it's much better than last year was. It will be for me, I know! Because I'm going to MAKE it better!
;o]
It does feel like a proactive year coming up.
:-)
I prefer the bubble-topped Jetsons' version myself.
:_)
The nuclear reactor/rocket engine programs of the 60s suffered from some fairly fundamental technical difficulties, not to mention the inevitable political/environmental problems that make it difficult to launch nukes in the first place. (See Project NERVA)
One of the things that NASA could do for interplanetary probes would be what I described, a double-dip into the Moon's gravitational well.
True, if they can tolerate the diminution in launch window that brings. The unfortunate fact is that right now, an interplanetary launch starts from the ground; and boosters are not designed for more than a few hours' mission life (batteries drive this). One implication is that if you also had to wait for the moon to be in the right location, your already-tight launch window would be drastically shortened -- say, from one month to perhaps 5 days. Much less risky to simply bypass the moon altogether.
I rag on NASA, because ... I fully expected to see Space Wheels and other habitats, and colonies on the Moon and on Mars.
All that shows is that there is a significant political component to spaceflight. It's Congress, not NASA, that cancelled Apollo and all of the planned spinoffs. The political purpose of beating the Russians had been achieved, and the necessarily vague notions of "exploration" were not compelling enough to compete with the other government programs with which NASA found itself in competition.
I figure if I don't make my year better, no one else will. And I like "better."
;o]
And to you! Safe and happy shooting.
Thanks, Victoria! Happy New Year to you, too!
I believe tomorrow is not just the first day of the new year, but also Moving Day for the Undead Thread!
Moving day? Wanna explain a little. :-)
Since the UT bogged down on July 4th weekend, at 35,000+ posts, we decided to keep the posts to a more managable level...about 10,000.
If we haven't reached it by the end of the month, we find another thread to "appropriate" and if we have gone beyond the 10,000, we still try to move it.
We hit the Wall once, and it was fun, but we haven't been able to do it since. So we will be moving...lock, stock and castle! Not to worry though...sion and I have you on our ping lists, so you will be notified of our new "location."
Oh, I see, it makes sense. Thanks.
Wekkum! ;o]
Yah! We are!
You'll be pinged, of course!
Thanks much. :-)
Thanks for being a part of the UT!
:o]
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