Posted on 07/07/2006 10:53:34 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
fyi
ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!
I really wish the space program had something intelligent between the extremes of probe exploration and "glorious vanity of great-leap manned tourism propaganda epics"
something like, oh... build a fleet of earth-to-moon ferrys/taxis... get a moon-base up and running... make that moon-base dedicated to cranking out more ships for longer-range manned EXPLOITATION...
THEN talk about going to Mars, in STYLE and in FORCE.
I vote for terraforming. It's as safe as anything else I can think of, and easily the most productive.
If you live in western Montana you can see a mother ship right now just to the lower right of the northern cross. Happened to be outside at 3AM and noticed this BIG satellite moving slowly. Oh, that must be the ISS. Then it STOPPED, been sitting there for about an hour, a magnitude brighter than deneb. If you were here right now you'd be a BELIEVER.
"I vote for terraforming. It's as safe as anything else I can think of, and easily the most productive."
All we have to do is find the secret alien base and deploy the air makers. In the meantime free air for everyone!!!
I have met her. She was one of the astronauts that launched the Magellan.
I would add....... prepare a joint venture with Japan.
We don't understand many of the mechanisms of our own environment. Terraforming, although an interesting proposition, is still safely in the realm of SiFi right alongside the Dyson Sphere.
I would suggest that we continue the robotic probes. So far, since the Apollo days, the best bang we have had for the buck. Alongside of those, we need to concentrate on developing (AND COMPLETE IT THIS TIME!) a reliable SSTO vehicle, drop this man-in-the-can idea we are reviving, and turn the ISS over to the Russians. It is in a lousy orbit anyway.
After that, we should then set our goals on sending humans where we find deficiencies in the robotic explorations due to a non-human presence.
Just my two cents.
That will come out of NASA about the same time you find yourelf picking apples off a tomato vine.
There are just too many ways to screw up SSTO (and the whole reason for doing it in the first place) for NASA to ever have the institutional discipline to successfully build one.
Any NASA space program that extends beyond four years is seriously doomed. NASA needs to do only what can be done in four years or less. Future cancellations such as Apollo are definitely on the agendum. Building an infrastructure in space would make too much longterm sense and be an easy target for every politician who needs an issue to run on.
There are a few ideas, but as a serious project it lacks in every environment there is including climatology and law.
The shuttle has been around as a program for more than thirty years. The station is what, twenty years in the making? Of course, the shuttle was sabotaged before it ever got off the ground by a republican administration, and the space station by a democrat administration.
They survived, but by the time the politicians finished changing the recipe it was no longer edible.
NASA needs to do only what can be done in four years or less.
NASA can't even decide what to do in four years, much less accomplish anything.
Future cancellations such as Apollo are definitely on the agendum. Building an infrastructure in space would make too much longterm sense and be an easy target for every politician who needs an issue to run on.
I imagine most of the real infrastructure that allows us to move out of low earth orbit and back to the moon and on to Mars will have to come from the private sector. NASA has too many bureaucratic requirements that make what is really needed (SSTO selling points type of vehicle) impossible a priori.
That's correct. Congress decides what NASA is to do, and year by year. Two years of continuity is achievable, four is barely possible, and six is about the limit. Small, long duration programs such as robot ships to outer planets may survive unnoticed from inception to launch, and then to at least primary goals.
The 15-person ad hoc Mars Architecture Assessment Committee was set up by the Space Studies Board, a research arm of the National Academies.Thanks for comin', drive home safely.
Terraforming, although an interesting proposition, is still safely in the realm of SiFi right alongside the Dyson Sphere.I agree.
I would suggest that we continue the robotic probes. So far, since the Apollo days, the best bang we have had for the buck.I wholeheartedly agree.
we need to concentrate on developing (AND COMPLETE IT THIS TIME!) a reliable SSTO vehicleIMHO we need a reliable, cheaper way to orbit, and that means man-in-the-can. Reusability is more expensive and partly mythical. The one thing that makes me think that SSTO is possible is that a Russian rocket guy said (circa 1990) that SSTO isn't possible. Reminds me of the way Korolev dismissed Von Braun's proposed 100 per cent cryofueled upper stages for Apollo, saying that the technical problems couldn't be solved.
turn the ISS over to the RussiansMostly agree. Looks like we almost have already. It was a kumbaya special olympics can't we all just get along idea in the first place, a negation of the Space Station Freedom proposal from President Reagan.
After that, we should then set our goals on sending humans where we find deficiencies in the robotic explorations due to a non-human presence.Missions to the Moon should have some kind of scientific purpose (by definition they have a political one, regardless of other things), and setting up a far-side radio observatory (or more than one) seems like a good idea (supposed to be really quiet over there, shielded from artificial radio sources from Earth), provided the far side is then off limits to a permanent human presence.
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