NASA a NEW direction! ????

[Hallerb]

Lets take the existing nasa budget and move the dollars around a bit.

First build a capsule to orbit system using a expendable booster. This would
take people orr cargo to LEO. ISS or other operations.

With a good program how long would this take?
================================================== =========

While this is going on we design a program for a visit to a asteroid thats
close by. Building a multi purpose lander, perhaps using a lunar module as a
rough blueprint.

Once the capsule system is up and running the shuttles are retired and the
money saved used for the asteroid mission, and a follow up one to the moon as a
precusor to mars. Moon mission coluld visit the farside and check out from a
distance one of the old apollo sites. Perhaps revisit the one thatr pilfered
the surveyor parts. Go back and saee what left of surveyor without damaging the
original landing site.

What do you all think?

The idea is to redirect the billions a year spent on shuttle to be spent on
other more interesting things.

Tho help fund it get sponsors. Pepsi to asteroid XXX Cokes mission to the
farside.

[Joseph S. Powell, III]

We need to put a great, great deal of money on a much better STS system - a
2-or-3-stage-to-orbit system would do the trick, something possibly only
slightly smaller than the current shuttle, possibly resembling the Orion
spaceplane in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
THEN we need to construct a REAL space station, a rotating one, again like
in 2001....
After that, a polar moonbase would be in order, shuttling up melted and
cracked Lunar ice and Helium 3.....
Then we can proceed with nuclear-driven manned Mars missions....
Then we can do a few Asteroids, start construction of some Aldrin Cycler
Stations orbiting between Earth and Mars....then go for a manned mission to
the Jovian moons, etc, etc.
Unless Neo wakes us all up and we realize all this has already happened in
the REAL world, and we are just stuck in the Matrix.

"Hallerb" > wrote in message
...
> Lets take the existing nasa budget and move the dollars around a bit.
>
> First build a capsule to orbit system using a expendable booster. This
would
> take people orr cargo to LEO. ISS or other operations.
>
> With a good program how long would this take?
> ================================================== =========
>
> While this is going on we design a program for a visit to a asteroid thats
> close by. Building a multi purpose lander, perhaps using a lunar module as
a
> rough blueprint.
>
> Once the capsule system is up and running the shuttles are retired and the
> money saved used for the asteroid mission, and a follow up one to the moon
as a
> precusor to mars. Moon mission coluld visit the farside and check out from
a
> distance one of the old apollo sites. Perhaps revisit the one thatr
pilfered
> the surveyor parts. Go back and saee what left of surveyor without
damaging the
> original landing site.
>
> What do you all think?
>
> The idea is to redirect the billions a year spent on shuttle to be spent
on
> other more interesting things.
>
> Tho help fund it get sponsors. Pepsi to asteroid XXX Cokes mission to the
> farside.
>
>