Posted on 09/07/2003 8:23:14 AM PDT by mikegi
We have to get some of our genetic eggs out of this basket. We must be able to leave the "nest" and begin to move some of the industry, resource and energy production issues to a new playing field. And population will eventually be an issue, even if the Earth First crowd is wrong about it being a dire problem now. And one asteroid or mutated virus and it's all over. Unless we're somewhere else in survivable numbers as well.
There is an interesting article posted a few days ago by the SF author Spider Robinson (the original author, not, I presume, the poster)about this that touches alot of the attitudes and trends involved. The title is:
Why are Our Imaginations Retreating from Science and Space, and into Fantasy?
a robot probe is a tool. It can't replace the imagination of a human being who's on scene and really experiencing the reality. It can extend their senses and make them more capable. The object, however, is for us to be able to leave this rock and go elsewhere.
And an Achille's Heel.
"Paging Larry Niven! Paging Mr. Niven. Please proceed to the nearest white courtesy. NASA needs a roll of Shadow Square Wire. A big one."
I'm an old school kind of guy. When I want to use nukes in space I want to use NUKES. I prefer Orion ;^>
Actually, Prometheus is excellent, from what I've seen. It does harken back to some of the earliest proposals in Von Braun's visionary stuff from the 50's and 60s, but there's nothing wrong with that, and the techniques and technologies have come a really long way. Do you know if they're going to incorporate some of the Russian powerplant stuff we got after the wall fell? I understand that was really good technology, reliable, robust, simple.
My only real problem is with the name. You do know what happened to Prometheus after he gave man fire, don't you? How's your liver? Who came up with that name?
Seems we could have found some use for the thing?
And why a space-station, why not a moon-station?
Ummm...If it's 40,000 miles long and geo-stationary and has at least something anchored to the other end...it wouldn't likely "dangle". By 'dangle', I think you meant it would hang from space?
It would behave the same way as if you held a six foot cord in your hand and spun around very fast. Centrifugal force would overcome gravity at some point along the cable and that would keep it quite taut.
The reactor design is being handled by Argonne and I think KAPL, and it is supposed to be a fast reactor. I am involved in radiation testing of components in the power conditioning and distribution bus. We're trying to get the folks at JPL and Glenn to think about silicon carbide, since it has that nice wide bandgap and thus is inherently rad-hard as well as being able to operate at high temperatures.
The JIMO concept is quite extraordinary. The idea of being able to go into orbit around one of the moons, hang around for awhile and make your observations, then blast out of orbit and go over to another one, is almost Star Trek kind of stuff when you think that until recently the best we've done is either flyby or one-time orbital insertion, either by aerobraking or beefed-up retrorockets.
Seems we could have found some use for the thing?
And why a space-station, why not a moon-station?
All very good questions. If NASA had any vision they'd have a plan sketched out for this very thing. Its a logical start. And sending out prospecting parties to look for water in the lunar polar regions would be a decent start. We know how to get there.
Trouble is, we know how, but I don't know if we have the will and the infrastructure. NASA is hobbled by bureaucracy and politics, so instead of proposing bold programs to go further into space, they spend a lot of time trying not to make mistakes and protecting turf. When you substitute timidity for vision, you tend to have mediocre and unproductive programs.
Infrastructure is a problem because a lot of intellectual capital has gone away. So has manufacturing capability. Even if we wanted to fly a Saturn V again I'm not sure we could build one. The fabrication facilities have been dismantled and I heard a rumor (urban legend?) that the plans for the Saturn V were either destroyed or lost. We'd be starting from scratch, probably reverse-engineering the one out on the front lawn of the JSC, which is (was) a flight-ready model (the one at the Visitor's Center at KSC is a test article).
I heard that one of the last surviving lunar modules was located at a junkyard somewhere. There was the one given to the Smithsonian so we might be able to reverse-engineer that, particularly the throttleable decent stage engine. Is Grumman still in the space flight business, or in business at all?
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