Posted on 03/25/2006 10:58:20 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
For the first time since 1972, the United States is planning to fly to the moon, but instead of a quick, Apollo-like visit, astronauts intend to build a permanent base and live there while they prepare what may be the most ambitious undertaking in history -- putting human beings on Mars.
President Bush in 2004 announced to great fanfare plans to build a new spaceship, get back to the moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars after that. But, with NASA focused on designing a new spaceship and spending about 40 percent of its budget on the troubled space shuttle and international space station programs, that timetable may suffer.
Still, NASA's moon planners are closely following the spaceship initiative and, within six months, will outline what they need from the new vehicle to enable astronauts to explore the lunar surface.
"It's deep in the future before we go there," said architect Larry Toups, head of habitation systems for NASA's Advanced Projects Office. "But it's like going on a camping trip and buying a new car. You want to make sure you have a trailer hitch if you need it."
Scientists and engineers are hard at work studying technologies that don't yet exist and puzzling over questions such as how to handle the psychological stress of moon settlement, how to build lunar bulldozers and how to reacquire what planetary scientist Christopher P. McKay of NASA's Ames Research Center calls "our culture of exploration."
The moon is not for the faint of heart. It is a lethal place, without atmosphere, pelted constantly by cosmic rays and micrometeorites, plagued by temperature swings of hundreds of degrees, and swathed in a blanket of dust that can ruin space suits, pollute the air supply and bring machinery to a screeching halt.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Our nation needs this.....more kids will want to be in the sciences.
Good on him.
Cool!
best way to build interplanetary vessels on the moon is in sections, launch and assemble them in orbit.
best way to launch sections: electromagnetic mass-driver
bonus: that same mass-driver could easily be used to lob large rocks at terrestrial enemies. boom, with no radiation... and, if done cleverly, with quite a bit of plausible deniability.
let us go back to the moon, please.
do you really want to imagine a world without velcro?
MORE FUNDING FOR SPACE EXPLORATION NOW!!!!
If someone gave you money you knew was stolen, would you be moral in spending it?
Pyramid-building is not dead.
Sounds like the outline of Heinlein's book, "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
This Mars crap is just that, crap. We as a nation now, more than ever, need to carefully balance the returns vs costs. Just what will a trip to Mars cost and what will it give us in return? To find out that maybe, just maybe a few million yrs ago some form of life existed there? A few single cell creatures that have been imbedded in rock?
To me, life on other planets is of no concern unless it is shown to have been intelligent and that ain't gonna happen.
To be honest, I could give a damn.
Please turn off your computer, since you don't give a damn about the miracle of modern microelectronics that the US space program created.
I'm all for space exploration, but if we are to venture into space, our society needs to be structured to take the emphasis of subsidizing socialism and geared towards promoting technological advancement. That would begin with education, and then step through emphasis on research via universities and then so on. All the while, social subsidies programs would need to be eliminated en masse.
Today's cultural and political climate is hardly aligned to the requirements necessary to promote a successful space exploration program.
Yet I heartily applaud those who would promote it. I would even support it, given that the right overtures are made on all fronts of the issue.
"We can fight a war, spend money on social programs like there is no tomorrow, run our deficits into our great-grandchildren's future ... and we can even go to Mars!"
The "Great Society" Part II.
--This Mars crap is just that, crap. We as a nation now, more than ever, need to carefully balance the returns vs costs. Just what will a trip to Mars cost and what will it give us in return?
In the long run, insurance.
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