Posted on 08/21/2005 7:03:34 PM PDT by KevinDavis
When President George W. Bush announced that the United States would begin a new effort to eventually return Americans to the surface of the Moon no later than 2020, the people tasked with that job immediately began addressing how they would accomplish it. They naturally started to consider the most obvious hardware that they would require—a launch vehicle (or vehicles) to lift the spacecraft into orbit, a spacecraft for carrying the humans to the Moon, and eventually a spacecraft for landing them on the Moon.
Some of those involved also started to turn to less obvious hardware questions, however. What will the astronauts do on the lunar surface? How will they accomplish this? And what tools will they require for their tasks? By summer 2005, it is unclear that the agency has made much progress on any of these questions. Too many people are tied up in the effort to get the shuttle flying again to devote time to a project many years away and still largely unfunded. NASA did hold a few discussions of lunar operations in the spring of 2005 and they called on some of the people who had actually walked on the Moon three decades before. In particular, at a public hearing in April a special committee tasked with outlining the steps needed to return to the Moon heard presentations about some of the proposed lunar surface equipment that could be used, including a talk by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt and Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, who participated by telephone.
(Excerpt) Read more at thespacereview.com ...
There's only one reason to return to the Moon, and that's to claim it as American territory and construct an American flag so large that every jihadi on Earth can see it.
Not only should it be claimed as territory, (although ultimately, it belongs to all the people of earth, not just one nation), but we should begin development of its resources.
I'm no moonbat when it comes to pop. control etc, but I am fully cognizant of the fact that mankind cannot stay in the cradle of humanity forever, to survive, to thrive, its future lies in the stars.
It can be done. Once the space infrastructure is there to build self-sustaining colonies, the only substantial cost involved will be to get people up there--which if they can build space shuttles and rockets to send small crews up there, they can build craft to send ordinary people up there to live and work in the colonies.
Man need not fight over land on earth and finite (although massive, ultimately resources on earth are going to hit a wall--probably not for millenia, but I wouldn't want to be here when we do) resources to allocate amongst themselves, when they can develop new worlds in space and explore the stars, free to associate with persons of their chosing and free to dissasociate with those they don't wish to be near.
Space colonies could be a form of social experimentation ultimately, allowing society to develop according to the self-determined wishes of the colonists which reside in them. Havens of liberty or bastions of dictatorship, they can choose their own destiny.
Oxygen, water, all the building blocks for life, while laborious to extract and put into a usable form, can be had on the moon and asteroids, for a cost far cheaper than to send them from earth (other than for the inital cost to set up bases for preparing the infrastructure--which would be a massive cost in the tens of billions, but once running could be self sufficent).
space is a place, not a program
just a thought..
I was talking to a friend of mine, an 'escaped' South African here in the US on a Green Card, who was bemoaning the liberals and our loss of freedoms here in the US.
He said, in so many words "Where are we going to go? There is no other country on earth to escape to".
We need another place to escape to.
Pardon me, but...what resources? The moon is barren. It has no atmosphere; no useful elements in any appreciable amount; nothing but the possibility of polar ice embedded in lunar rocks. Anyone living on the moon may as well be living in the middle of the Sahara.
I support going to the moon and using it as a stationary observation platform (imagine a ground-based Hubbell Space Telescope with a self-sustaning orbit) and used as a waystation for manned missions to Mars, but that's about the sum of it.
I like the whole flag-in-the-face thing, but claiming the moon as American territory would be a pretty darned bad move.
Whoever controls the moon controls the planet. I doubt the Chinese or the Russians would take that lying down.
I'm confident that the best qualities of America and freedom in general will prevail. Things have been going our way since Reagan. There is no reason to leave now.
Helium-3 is very valuable and abundant on the moon. But I agree, it's a waste going to the moon.
I support going to the moon and using it ... as a waystation for manned missions to Mars
After leaving one gravity well, why would you enter another to get to Mars?
There's not a damn thing they can do about it, except maybe negotiate a place on our Moon.
Need I remind you that they have nuclear weapons and have clearly indicated that they are not above using them in the event that we threaten their security in any way?
The Russians at least have a stake in the game. China, on the other hand, I would never trust them to make a rational decision. Their xenophobia runs far too deep in their national psyche.
First, I disagree that whoever controls the Moon controls the Earth. If the Moon were a decent military platform, we would already have one there. As far as nuclear weapons go, China and Russia might as well detonate a doomsday machine for all the good it will do them. The crackpots who say they want to destroy us are just crackpots. Because the press loves to quote them doesn't make it any different.
Then you honestly have no grasp of the situation.
If the Moon were a decent military platform, we would already have one there.
We haven't because we understand the ramifications...and because we signed an international treaty. Are you suggesting that the U.S. should now break that treaty and risk thermonuclear war? If so, thank God people like you don't call the shots.
Excuse me? Billions upon billions of tons.
There are plenty of useful elements. Now "cost-effective" is another matter.
We just broke the ABM treaty. Where's the thermonuclear war?
We can also turn lead into gold. What's the priority on making that "cost effective"?
Iron ore (steel), copper, lead, titanium, silicon, etc. I won't name all of them (way too many to name), but in lunar soil there is oxygen atoms as well as considerable source of nitrogen and hydrogen.. most of the building blocks of life, just need to be extracted and processed to a readily usable form.
With a moon mining colony should be quite easy...
Where did you get the info about no useful elements in appreciable amount? They obviously given you mistaken information.
Read The High Frontier by Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill or Islands in the Sky (not sure author)
It is less than 1/5th the gravity. Maybe not a big difference in itself, but when you figure oveall mass of one versus the other, plus the encumberance of an atmosphere on earth, it is a net 1000:1 difference.. Advantage=moon.
When you figure overall gravitational pull, plus mass, earth is a huge gravity well to escape, but the moon is little to none in comparison.
That's actually changing elements, and if it needed to be done for there to be anything useful, it would support your contention.
What do you think the moon is made of? Further, unlike the earth, the moon has no atmosphere - thus solar power is actually practical as a power source (once you pay the ridiculous price to get stuff there). Solar furnaces would be great for smelting.
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