Posted on 11/21/2005 6:02:23 PM PST by KevinDavis
A newly released study has focused on how best to return people to the Moon, reporting that future lunar missions can be done for under $10 billion - far less than a NASA price tag.
The multi-phased three-year study was done by a private space firm, SpaceDev of Poway, California, and concluded that safe, lower cost missions can be completed by the private sector using existing technology or innovative new technology expected to be available in time to support human exploration of the Moon in the near-future.
SpaceDev announced the results of its International Lunar Observatories Human Servicing Mission study last week at a meeting conducted by Lunar Enterprise Corporation (LEC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Space Age Publishing Company of Hawaiis Island, Hawaii, and Palo Alto, California. The study was funded by LEC.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Very cool, but the international aspects concern me. If we don't capitalize on our lead and make the moon significantly and undeniably U.S. territory, we will see the United Nations claim it and administer it as their own, no matter who settles there first. I will check that. If a communist nation gets there and sets up a settlement, they'll tell the U.N. to go stuff it, and the U.N. will.
They could certainly try.
Don't dismiss it. You know what our space station turned into.
But what this article's talking about is completely private space travel. I'd like to see the UN try to exercise jurisdiction over these explorers on its own authority, without help from us.
You make some good points regarding private sector. That does put a different spin on this to be sure.
Look, we paid somewhere between 80 and 95% of the cost of the space station. Then we dubbed it international. I don't really care what the initial plan was. If we're paying to bring home the bacon, I'm not going to be happy if we wind up with spam.
Spamming this as international just doesn't seem right to me. We pay the lion's share then allow everyone else to run tests under equal billing. I don't care for it.
Did the Russians wind up paying for their component. There was a time when they said we'd have to pay, because they couldn't afford it. Did we pay for that?
I don't either. There is but one way the UN will be able to exert control, and that's if our government cooperates. But then, it won't matter at that point if we get to the moon first or not, because we'd just end up handing it over to them. So the real fight has to be to get the quislings out of government.
Job number ONE!
Next to impossible...
The big threat to US human space presence isn't NASA vs private sector, it's something else, actually a twofold threat:
1) Congress vs common sense
2) various other autonomous space programs run by gov'tal or quasi-gov'tal orgs.
The US needs heavy lift capability like we had with the Saturn V. Any human activity in space will require it, whether it's going back to the Moon, or going to Mars, or mining asteroids, or building the next (and all-US) space station
The US also needs a broad vision that includes private sector development with a long range view and resources to sustain it.
Human landings on Mars are possible, and should be the focus of most of the human space program. But anything developed for it should have in view future missions. A permanent orbiting base around Mars should be the first major goal for Mars exploration.
Human landings are also possible on Mars' moons.
Human missions to Mercury are just about the limit, with the possible exception of some larger minor planets. Ceres is basically spherical, as are some of the moons of the larger, outer planets. But it'll be a long, cold trip. Both ways.
Go, plant the flag, moon the enemy, return safely.
FWIW.
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