Democrats See Plot in TransOrbital's Moon Plans (Snicker :)

The Space Policy Digest BBS ^ | 14:59 GMT on 15 Sep 2002 | Mark R. Whittington

[anymouse]

A site calling itself www.democrats.com has a series of hysterical posts about TransOrbital's plan to send a private mission to the Moon.

"While Nation Looks the Other Way on 9/11 Anniversary, Bush Gives Moon to Private Corporation for 'Industrial Development' Like all the other international laws, Bush is now ignoring those pertaining to space. As America is distracted by 9/11 remembrances and warnings of new threats, His Heinous has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called TransOrbital that has a far-reaching, frigthening agenda for the corporate domination of space. All TransOrbital had to do was promise not to contaminate and pollute the moon - yeah, right. That's what the oil companies say about ANWR. There was no Congressional vote - not even any consultation. Bush simply acted as if the moon were his to give away. The TransOrbital venture could be disastrous for the globe - no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure or removing mass, via mining, will impact the delicate gravitational interplay between Earth and its only satellite. The moon belongs to all the people of the Earth - not to George. W. Bush or his friends at TransOrbital."

The Artemis Society is a right wing front, by the way.

"TransOrbital Just Like Bush - Long on Grandiosity and Corporate Schemes, Short on Real Science The company that Bush turned the moon over to as its personal corporate playground is a chip off the old Blockhead. Check out this home page: http://www.transorbital.net/index.html - notice the ad at the top of the page, where the company brags that it will make it possible to display commercial messages on the surface of the moon. Now check this site out for the Artemis Society - the group that is behind TransOrbital. It reminds us of those rghtwing front sites that lead to multiple front sites and nothing is what it seems. You'll notice that their web host calls itself the "Illuminati" and as based in Texas. How Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney can you get!? Here's another one of their "subsites": Project Leto, a moon tourism outfit based in Las Vegas to attract the glitzy crowd."

Of course it is all a Bush plot to seize the Moon for evil purposes.

"U.S. Military Control of Space from the Moon: The Real Plan behind TransOrbital's Permission to 'Develop' the Moon? Everyone by now knows with painful clarity that the Bush administration does not do a single thing without having something in it for them, and usually something big and juicy. Now put two and two together: Bush gives a wacko commercial company with a scheme called the Artemis Project the green light to be the first to commandeer the moon, commercially - that means patents and legal privilege of a sweeping and unprecedent nature. Now add to that the USS Space Command's long range plan - military control of space. It doesn't take more than two neurons to figure out that once the Artemis Project gets its foot in the lunar door, the "state-sponsored" construction of a military space base will follow."

The Left has always been against government funded space exploration. Looks like they are against commercial space exploration as well. Thanks to Doug Haston on sci.space.policy for pointing this one out.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Democrats See Plot in TransOrbital's Moon Plans (Snicker :)
Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2002 18:49:21 -0500
From: Steve Jackson
To:

Euw. Well, we can hope that they'll stay home when the rest of us take off.

Steve Jackson - yes, of SJ Games - yes, we won the Secret Service case
Learn Web or die - http://www.sjgames.com - dinosaurs, Lego, Kahlua!
The heck with PGP keys; finger for Geek Code. Fnord.

[Liberal Classic]

Bump and bookmarked!

[Constantine XIII]

Well, obviously, if the moon is lighter than before, it will fall at a slower rate than before, causing it to drift away into space. It's just the same as feathers falling slower than hammers, right?! :oP (sarcasm)

[anymouse]

Maybe Buzz needs to knock some sense into these luna-tic Demo-rats. ;)

[parsifal]

"I Know Whe Bush's Gay Lover is" by monkeegirl. Page one of the general discussion thread.

I disagree with you that they are a bunch of losers. At least "losers" have been in a race somewhere and tried to accomplish something. Most of those idiots give "losers" a bad name. I don't think most of them have ever had an original thought. Thats why "de-hider" and "wee-boy" protect them so thoroughly from any real discussion and disagreement and gives them emoticons so they can express in pictures what they can not express in words. parsy who dares the cellar.

[uglybiker]

I'm not finding it. Care to post a link?

[parsifal]

Now its on page 2 of general discussion thread. Has 163 replies. I can not link it because it has this wierd address with no "www" stuff" in it. parsy.

[montrose]

Any plan to develop the moon or planets commercially is by definition a con game, and there have been many such schemes over the years to separate gullible investors from their money.

If the moon was made of gold it would not be profitable to retrieve any of it. Planetary exploration will remain fundamentally a government activity, if that, for a long time to come.

[Catfanatic]

bump......ROFLMBO

[anymouse]

montrose signed up 2002-04-04

Of course montrose knows all, especially about commercial space activities. /sarcasm

[montrose]

Name one commercially viable business plan for planetary exploration. There aren't any. There HAVE been a number of plans hawked to a gullible public--but they have lost their investment.
In some cases they propose to subsidize their efforts by leeching off the government facilities, but that begs the question.

Note that I speak very carefully about PLANETARY exploration (including the moon), not communications satellites and the like.

The CLOSEST proposal anyone has made has been the novel suggestion that a Voyager-type mission could be privately funded, and paid for by royalties from the imaging products (IMAX films and so forth). But that's a money-loser too.

[anymouse]

Guys like you were standing on the Spanish shore telling Columbus that he was wasting his investors' money.

Ney sayers are a dime a dozen. It take very little effort to criticize the doers in life. If you don't like the odds of someone's business plan, don't invest. But to catagorize all such efforts globally and forever to be frauds is specious. Sure many of these efforts are terminally naive. But they do have the right to try. And potential investors have the right to pass over their prospectuses for more desireable investments. That's the way the market works.

Last I checked the job of God was taken, therefore you are oversteeping your bounds by making the proclaimations that you have.

[Timesink]

Instapundit is all over this:

---snip---

IT'S NOT JUST DENNIS KUCINICH who's into space kookery. Check out this item from Democrats.Com on the private TransOrbital moon mission (no permalinks, you'll have to scroll):

Like all the other international laws, Bush is now ignoring those pertaining to space. As America is distracted by 9/11 remembrances and warnings of new threats, His Heinous has turned the moon over to a private, for-profit corporation called TransOrbital that has a far-reaching, frigthening agenda for the corporate domination of space. All TransOrbital had to do was promise not to contaminate and pollute the moon - yeah, right. That's what the oil companies say about ANWR. There was no Congressional vote - not even any consultation. Bush simply acted as if the moon were his to give away. The TransOrbital venture could be disastrous for the globe - no scientist today could predict yet how adding mass to the moon via human infrastructure or removing mass, via mining, will impact the delicate gravitational interplay between Earth and its only satellite. The moon belongs to all the people of the Earth - not to George. W. Bush or his friends at TransOrbital.

(Emphasis added). Actually, pretty much any scientist could tell you that nothing TransOrbital does could make the slightest difference in the "gravitational interplay" between the Earth and its "only satellite." (Er, only satellite except for this one, and this one).

The Moon's mass is .07 x 10²⁴ kg. The Earth is approximately 81 times more massive. By contrast, TransOrbital is talking about payloads in the hundreds (10²) of kilograms at most. Can these people do math? Do they have any idea what they're talking about?

Why am I wasting my time asking such obvious questions?

Democrats.Com is a parody site, right? Well, yes, whether intentionally or not.

And boy, it didn't take long for this prediction to come true, did it?

UPDATE: Faisal Jawdat emails that it's even worse than I make it out above:

If I recall correctly, the strongest gravitational influence on the moon is not the earth, it's the sun. The earth and the moon share more or less the same orbit around the sun, passing each other as they go.

Contrast to the moons of other planets in the solar system where the strongest gravitational influence is the local planet.

It's been a long time since I studied this stuff, but that sounds right. (And Faisal's a tech guy). Is there an astronomer in the house? Somebody page Jay Manifold!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Mike Doffing points out:

The moon gets unpredicatable amounts of mass added to it all the time. (Hint: they're called craters.) Moreover, the influx rate does vary significantly (think meteor showers).

Then there's the earth, which, as you point out, is much larger and therefore attracts even more stuff. It is now known (only proven farily rececntly) that all of our water comes from space -- the early earth was too hot to retain it. How much do the oceans weigh?

I don't know if they can do math. They certainly can't do astronomy.

I think the "no scientist can say what the long-term effects will be" is just a reflexive rhetorical trope now, and hence doesn't require asking any actual scientist anything, or even listening to what they say if you do. This really does read like a parody, but the site, alas, is serious. Well, as serious as it's capable of being, anyway. With some people the difference is pretty arbitrary.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jay Manifold replies:

Truly bizarre. Strictly speaking, of course, the statement ("... no scientist today could predict ...") is literally correct, but only because any effect would be so small. Some carriers of anti-commercial memes will stop at nothing, and of course the math involved (see link) is way over the heads of a goodly portion of the electorate.

Faisal Jawdat is correct. Applying F ~ mM/r^2, and setting the Moon's pull on Earth at 1, the Sun's pull on Earth works out to about 174. By contrast, Jupiter's pull on Earth is (on average) 0.006. I could do the rest of the Solar System, but it's late.

Mike Doffing is also correct: "More than 100 tonnes of inter-planetary dust enters the earth's atmosphere each day." (link)

Democrats.Com: Your #1 source for bizarre misinformation! Well, one of them, anyway. There are so many . . . .

---snip---

Word just keeps on spreading: The Democratic Party is losing what little mind it has!

[irv]

There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.

[Brett66]

ROFLMAO! Maybe they'll change their outlook on the whole thing if they realize a lot of us capitalist pigs would move there given half a chance. That leaves the earth to them to return to it's pristine state. We'll take over the rest of the solar system. Bwahaaa!

[irv]

Last I checked the job of God was taken

I saw the following on a sign outside a church the other day: Many are willing to serve the Lord, but only as advisers.

[Democrap]

Someone otto suggest that there be a moon transportation tax, and a moon weight tax. That would stop their objection. I’m sure they could come up with 50 other moon taxes for the rich moon people.

democrap home

[Jonah Hex]

There must be, I heard about it on a Pink Floyd album!

(grin)

Yep, I know, the proper term is "farside" since daylight on the moon shifts with the Moon's phase during the month i.e. both nearside and farside are in sunlight at different times of the month. That image was a screencapture from "Space:1999" and broadcast with that text. I guess the producers assumed most people would identify more with "darkside" rather than "farside".

[montrose]

Seems to me it is you with delusions of being god, Columbus, or some like visionary. I'm just telling you the way it is. And Columbus' task was orders of magnitude easier than planetary exploration, even goven today's technology. Columbus wasn't even the first to cross the Atlantic. Brendan beat him by about 700 years in a hide-covered boat.

Read sci-fi about this stuff, yes, but don't encourage the investment con-artists.

I'm reminded of the people who want to colonize Mars to relieve population problems, when it would be orders of magnitude easier to colonize Antarctica, and we've yet to do that. I wouldn't advise investment in Antarctica Acres either.

As for investments, if dot-coms were built on nothing and a promise, they were BLUE CHIPS compared to these sucker-schemes.

Again, if the moon was made of gold, one still couldn't make a business case for exploiting it. Kind of tells you where the break-even point lies. Hell, if it was made of DIAMONDS ready to be scooped up, it wouldn't be worth it, even if diamond prices held. For a quick illustration, let's say that the moon was made of 3-carat (3 gram) cut diamonds worth $10,000 each. For each $100 million a sample-return mission would cost, it would be necessary to return 30,000 (30 kg) of diamonds. If the mission cost was $500 million, 150 kg of payload needs to be returned. Kind of hard, seeing as how a $1.5B Mars sample-return mission slated for 2005 will only return two beer-can size containers of material.

In contrast, Queen Isabella's gamble, while large, was nowhere near in this realm of impossibility of success. The Columbus voyage cost 1,500,000 maravedis. Gold in those days went for 3,000 maravedis per ounce. So the break-even point was equivalent to about 500 ounces of gold. Not hard to envision that kind of return.

And if you believe a planetary mission can be paid with ad revenue, you probably also believed that the Internet could be supported by pop-up ads. Another sucker scheme in the tank.

These "privatize space" schemes are at best a distraction. We should vigorously explore space, and realize that it will come out of taxes.