Posted on 08/23/2018 6:01:26 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Bridenstine thinks NASA should have taken an opportunity to pursue the moon almost a decade ago.
"If you go back to 2009, the United States, through NASA, made a critical discovery, which is the moon has hundreds of billions of tons of water ice. To me, that should have changed our direction immediately," he said. "From 1969, when we first landed on the moon, up until 2009, a lot of people believed that the moon was bone-dry. In 2008, the Indians did an experiment and they realized there was water ice on the moon and then we did an experiment and realized how much water ice could potentially be on the moon at the poles.
"So the question is — during those 40 years, we missed that. What else have we missed?"
Now, as NASA administrator, Bridenstine is carrying out President Donald Trump's direction of returning astronauts to the moon.
"We need to get to more parts of the moon than we have ever gotten to ever before," he said. "When you look at the Apollo program, we had six landings, all in the equatorial regions of the moon, and we didn't get the full perspective, the full understanding, the science and the knowledge."
Bridenstine also said he sees the moon as a way forward to points farther out in the solar system.
"I think a lot of people miss the fact that the moon represents an amazing proving ground for all of the technologies and the human-performance capabilities that are necessary to survive on another planet and the ability to develop in-situ utilization abilities," Bridenstine said. "The moon represents the capabilities to do that activity for the first time, rather than doing it on Mars for the first time, where you can't come home for another two years."
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
I recently got interested in reading Sci-Fi again and decided to start with the Master, Robert Heinlein. Ordered about 10 paperbacks on E-Bay and started on one last night.
It’s a collection of short stories and one is “Moon for Sale”. Trying to get people to buy property there and move to it.
Yeah but let’s not make it a penal colony. Don’t want rocks thrown at me when they rebel.
Pelosi, Schummer, Mueller, etc.?
...start with Hillary and Mad Maxine, add Odungo for comic effect...
There was a novel called _Ice_ published back in 2002, with cover art by Alan Bean_ that posited the idea of water at the south lunar pole. The Wikipedia article about the book says the the Lunar Prospector found signs of such ice as far back as 1994.
I sometimes go to sleep dreaming of being a radio astronomer on the far side, where it could get pretty quiet while the full Moon’s facing Earth.
The novel you want to read is Robert Heinlein's _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress._ You're welcome and I look forward to your review! :-)
Beaten again! You’d think I’d learn! :-D
Didn’t we do that in the 1990’s? That was until an accident blew it out of orbit in 1999.
Paging SC Mueller...
I have reliable information that there is solid evidence on the Moon that Trump has committed serious treason, but it requires you and your 16 democrat lawyers to visit the moon and stay there for 30 days.
I cannot imagine anything more worthless at a time that we are 21 TRILLION dollars in debt. 21 TRILLION!! absolutely must be paid back by generations to come. We have national border issues, infrastructure to repair, illegal alien murderers to house in prison, etc. etc. We have no need or use or motive to send anyone to the Moon, MUCH LESS live on that rock at $BILLIONS in expense of money we don’t have. The absurdity of that is mind boggling.
Democrats I hope....
Actually, lunar gravity is 1/6 of earth, so you wouldn’t be completely weightless there, just lighter…
(Maybe oversized Libs like Michael Moore or Rosie O’donuts can be enticed to live there with the promise of 80% weight loss? ;-)
Those who control near Earth orbit control the Earth.
Those that control the Moon have the resources to potentially control low Earth orbit.
Pouring money into space research created the technology that has kept us ahead of the rest of the world... until the Clintons and Obama insisted on selling it - giving it away to our competitors.
Riiiight ( wink wink)
Yes, had that same discussion/conclusion with someone else here a few months ago, thanks!
(I don’t get a chance to read SF as often as I used, or would like to)
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