On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 07:38:29 -0700, quibbler
wrote:

In article 0Y1Qb.235603$ts4.56758@pd7tw3no, says...
The media and this group should stop calling the new NASA directive a 'moon
plan'. It seems that the belief is that Bush is cancelling everything NASA
does and moving all the money into a manned moon base. This isn't the case
at all.

No, that is quite the case. You're just in the early stages of denial
and haven't faced budget realities. The fact is that Bush has demanded a
wasteful realignment of NASA resources toward a manned mission which will
be ruinously expensive. The fact is that real science is far to
expensive with a manned program. Robots must lead the way.

Yet Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did more science on the moon in
thier few hours on the surface than all previous unmanned missions put
together. Yes manned programs are more expensive, but when conducted
properly they can return vast quanities of Science. Apollo and Skylab
were very effective, Shuttle and ISS are a waste.



It would be more accurate to call this an 'exploration plan'.

No it wouldn't you republican shill. We can explore without manned
missions or a permanent moon base. Bush is destroying the real science
programs because he just doesn't get it.

What "real" science programs has Bush proposal destroyed?

"Exploration" is just a
bull**** buzzword. You apparently weren't smart enough to figure that
out, so I'm afraid I've got to break it to you bluntly. The Bush
administration only wants diversionary stunts. They don't give a rat's
ass about science. They are theocratic cretins who know that if we do
eventually find evidence of past life on mars that it will be devatating
to their religious world view.


What's really
happening is that NASA's focus is changing from LEO cargo flights and ISS

That focus was instituted under the moronic Reagan adminstration. They
demanded "space station freedom" to keep up with the Ruskies. Bush
happily continued that program and even vowed to keep flying the shuttles
in the aftermath of columbia.

I seem to recall 8 years of another President who didn't do much to
change the status quo.


maintenance, and towards more exploration and science.

Bull****. We do science and exploration with unmanned probes. Period.
It would be inordinately dangerous with present technology to do any kind
of detailed science with manned missions. Instead of a robot like spirit
failing, our whole crew would die.

It worked on the Moon between 1969-1972, detailed science was done
with manned missions and no one died there.

There are whole classes of failures that kill robot missions dead
which would take a manned crew 30 seconds to resolve and move on.
Galileo's whole high-gain antennee problem could have been solved with
one swift kick. Mars Climate Orbiter would have survived if someone
had been looking out the window saying "thats not right".


People are too fragile to explore
most places. Even if we sent men to mars we would probably use them to
drive robots around remotely in real time. What we need to do is invest
in research and develop our technology. It's obvious that our present
technology is not quite up to the task of serious "exploration" as it is.
Relying upon it for a manned program is crazy.

All the technology was in place for a long term science and
exploration program on the moon in 1972, we let the capability drift
away, but the technology and much much more is available

It's not even clear
at this point that the main focus will be a moon base - that was just the
hook for the public.

What a ridiculous excuse. A politician directly states something as
policy and you're so in thrall to your right wing ideology that you now
say, "That's not what he really meant. That's just what he was telling
the plebes". If that was his idea of PR then it backfired bigtime. Most
people thought that a manned return to the moon would be a hugely
wasteful stunt. Now the Bushies are spinning like mad trying to back
pedal and soft pedal and do damage control.


Why is going to the moon inherently a "wasteful stunt", can't "real"
science be done on the moon?

NASA has distributed its Vision under the new initiative to its employees.
Here's what it says:

That's nice. But the idiot emperor Bush has demonstrated that he's gonna
micromanage and control the program for his own political ends. These
"vision" statements are never worth the paper they are printed on,
especially when coming at the behest of the bush administration.

Why to I get the feeling that had Al Gore uttered the exact same
proposal you would be all for it.

snip
Kelly McDonald