David Spain wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
Are you off your meds, David? First you question the science utility
of a human return to the moon, where humans can actually explore the
surface to a level of detail that no robot could possibly match,

That is true. And that appeals to Dr. Schmidt and... ?

Many. Dr. Paul Spudis, for one:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/

There are others. Just because you are ignorant of their existence does
not mean they do not exist.

then you post this nonsense about sending humans past Venus just so
you could

Actually to orbit Venus for a few months, dropping probes, placing
satellites
in orbit around it, maybe doing atmospheric sample returns, etc. A Venus
orbital
exploration mission would be a great warm-up for a Mars mission.
As you said small steps. We could do all that with a traveling space
habitat.
Try to do that with Constellation.

There is still no need to send people. Everything you list could be done
more cheaply without them. That will always be the case for Venus,
because it is impractical for humans to explore its surface directly. It
is not the case for the surfaces of the moon and Mars, where not only
can humans explore more effectively than robots, but more
*cost*-effectively as well.

Venus has an atmosphere that has "global warming" run amok. There might be
some useful science to be done there with Earth application.[/quote]

However, no science that requires people.

The moon
offers
us... ?

Lots. Dr. Spudis explains it more eloquently than I could; I suggest you
look over some of the past articles in his blog.

But putting all that aside, my actual point is a space habitat could
travel.

I don't see why we need to jump down the gravity well of the moon just to
establish how to do long endurance space living. The ISS is a start. But
then it looks to me like from a policy perspective I don't know what the
plan is
after shuttle. A few Orion visits? Then what?

At least six years, probably ten or more, of ISS operations after
shuttle retirement.

A space habitat could be built in LEO, travel out to the moon or elsewhere
and then return to LEO, where it would remain accessible even after a US
moon program is abandoned. We could park it near the ISS. In fact the ISS
would serve as a good construction site for the traveling habitat.

Nope. As someone with over 15 years experience working ISS, I can tell
you it's a ****ty site for construction. All the features of SSF that
would have enabled large-scale in-space construction were gone by the
time it morphed into ISS.