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 ...
I say we start grabbing illegal aliens and super glueing them hand to foot and making a ladder to the moon with them. Pay em under the table and Americans sure won't do that job.
Tell NASA if they secure the borders first then they can go to the moon and beyond.
Islamists to the Moon!
Thanks for posting this. Wow, an article from the Washington Post that was readable - who woulda thunk!
Kudos to President Bush for his space initiative. I'm sure the MSM will fall all over themselves to praise him (/sarcasm)
For chrissakes, this an article about science and space exploration; it's not a thread about illegal immigration!!!
I swear you people are going to drive me to advocate full amnesty; keep up the good work ;-(
I'd love to see a man land on Mars in my lifetime, but I doubt it will happen. As long as there's money to be had in prolonging the process, NASA will never again put a man on the moon, much less on Mars.
My first thought was illegal aliens doing all the off camera work.
Now posting my standard issue pre-emptive strike on the NASA is a waste of money, robots are the only solution, private industry is the only..., etc, crowd.........
Astronauts bring back the visions of space, they bring back what its like to see our earth as an outsider. They bring back what its like to be a child of earth. To see our world as it truly is, an oasis in a vast black expanse.
They take human presence beyond our world. No machine can do this.
They teach us that the sky is not the limit, that there ARE no limits.
They keep an AMERICAN presense in space. If we dont. Someone else will certainly take the lead. China is seeking the high ground now.
There are reasons why this nation is where it is today.
Reasons why any of us are here at all. Brave people took the risks and went beyond the horizon. They did so on ships they knew may not return and on imperfect wings.
Astronaut Story Musgrave.....
"We have been a frontier culture. We were born out of exploration, we were born out of adventure. We were born out of the plains and the mountains. We've been a very physical kind of culture. And so, if you look at adventure, if you look at exploration, if you look at immersion in nature, a physical culture, and all those things, you can see directly how space flight relates to the way America has been born and how it evolved."
"You have to keep pushing the frontier not
just because it's there, but because that's how we find things that end up changing humanity," -Paul Hill, Mission Control
Why Space, Why Explore?
Astronaut Story Musgrave...........
We have no choice, Sir. It is the Nature of Humanity, it is the Nature of Life
The Globe was created and Life Evolved, and you look at every single cubic millimeter on this Earth, You can go 30,000 feet down below the Earth surface, You can go 40,000 feet up in the air and Life is There. When you look at the globe down there, you see Teeming Life Everywhere
It is the Power of Life, And maybe I am not just a Human up here, you know. Now Life is Leaping off the Planet. It is heading to other parts of the Solar System, other parts of the Universe
There are those kinds of Pressures. It isn't simply politics, it is not simply technology, it is really not just the essence of humanity, but it is sort of also, you could look at it as maybe the Essence of Life. I think Teilhard de Chardin, in Phenomenon of Man, I believe he put that incredibly well. So those kind of Forces are at Work. It is the nature of humans to be exploratory and to Push On
Yes, it costs resources and it does cost a lot, and there is a risk, there is a penalty, there is a down side, but Exploration and Pioneering, I think those are the critical things, it is the Essence of what Human Beings are, and that is to try to understand their Universe and to try to participate in the entire Universe and not just their little Neighborhood -Story Musgrave
One of my most convincing arguments for space exploration is the
analogy that Earth itself is a spacecraft. Everything we learn about
how to function and live in space applies directly to our spacehip
Earth. How to recycle air, water, how to generate and use power
efficiently, how to grow food in closed ecosystems. All of it is
important. All of this can benefit mankind in a world with a fast
growing population. Understanding other worlds is
how we understand OUR world better, to understand
how it formed and where it is going. Its our only home for now.
"We must not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our
exploring will be to arrive where we began, and to know it for the
first time."
T.S. Eliot
President Bush at the Columbia memorial at JSC................
"The cause of exploration and discovery is not an option we choose, It
is a desire written in the human heart."
And at the announcement of new American space policy...........
"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once
drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore
space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national
spirit."
Gallup survey.....
"More than three-fourths (77%) of the American public say they support a newplan for space exploration that would include a stepping-stone approach to returnthe space shuttle to flight, complete assembly of the space station, build areplacement for the shuttle, go back to the Moon and then on to Mars and beyond"
Excerpted from Silver Linings : Triumph of the Challenger 7. by June Scobee
A note in a Challenger astronauts briefcase found after the loss.....
"We have whole planets to explore, we have new worlds to build. We have a solar system to roam in. And if only a tiny fraction of the human race reaches out toward space, the work they do there will totally change the lives of all the billions of humans who remain on earth, just as the strivings of a handful of colonists in the new world totally changed the lives of everyone in Europe, Asia & Africa."
Had Dick left the note in his briefcase for us to find if something happened? Did he write it on scratch paper to use to quote in a speech? All we'll ever know is that when we most needed a message, it was there. He left for us his dream for the world, his vision for space exploration.
Pedal to the metal, people! Politicians can print as much money as we need to do everything the politicians can dream up!
Ya gotta love the printing press; it'll get us back to the Moon.
I won't believe it until I hear the complaints that Dubai Ports World is buying the moon port.
Hold on to your wallets, for some more inappropriate government spending!
That's a great graphic!
YOu could stop all NASA spending today and it wouldnt impact that mess on that budget graph one bit.
The far greater and tragic cost is to NOT explore.
It's about bloody time.
img src="http://www.smallartworks.ca/PS/Space1999/AlphaMoonbase/Alpha1.jpg"> They'd better call it Moonbase Alpha or I'm gonna be mad...LOL
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