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Old February 13th 12, 11:13 PM posted to sci.space.policy
Brad Guth[_3_]
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Default NASA considers outpost beyond moon's far side

On Feb 13, 7:24*am, "Val Kraut" wrote:
NASA's

associate administrator for human exploration and operations,
a team is being formed
to develop a cohesive plan for exploring a spot in space known
as the Earth-moon libration point 2 (EML-2)."


Could someone please explain to me how you "explore" a spot in space? But,
we would save money on sample return containers.

Several years ago we were in the lounge on a cruise ship. There was an
announcement - We are about to cross the Arctic Circle. Three women jumped
up and raced to the window, almost knocking people over, to get a look at
it. They were disappointed that they missed it.


A tethered OASIS/outpost/gateway offers all sorts of nifty advantages.

That moon is worth perhaps a trillion dollars per month to us, or to
whomever gets control of it. Having the Earth-moon L1 (perhaps more
so than the farside L2) as a command post would be extremely valuable,
and I'm not even talking about astronomy values. The farside L2 would
be ideal for astronomy and space communications, but not much good for
anything else.

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