Why the HELL haven't we gone back to the moon yet?

[crossposting reduced to groups for which this is at least somewhat
on-topic.]

I'll answer that question with another one: why is it that we all
think Apollo was a wonderful achievement, while many of us (myself
included) think ISS should just be let deorbit rather than waste any
more money on it? What's the difference?

The difference is that with Apollo, _people were wise enough to quit
while they were ahead_. Fly six missions - enough to prove it wasn't a
fluke, and do everything that needed doing - and bow out gracefully
before the sparkle wears off.

_A_ space station (i.e. Skylab) was worth doing, to answer the
questions "can people stay healthy without gravity?" and "is there
anything useful or fun for people to do in low earth orbit?".
(Unfortunately the answer to both questions is no, but that's the way
the cookie crumbles; it was worth finding out.) Endlessly repeating
the "put a cramped unhealthy camping trailer in low orbit for no
apparent reason" thing just turns it from a great adventure into
something the world can see is a dreary, pointless mess. Sending
people back to the moon right now would do the same to Apollo - it
would spoil the memory. Don't do it.

Will it ever be time to go back to the moon? Yes - when we can build a
self-sufficient colony in space, rather than just look around and go
home again. Transport (better ships, cheaper access to space) is _not_
the limiting factor on that. If we want to bring closer the time for a
return to the moon - to stay - then the thing to do is work on the
technology we'll need for self-sufficiency. Until then, let's work on
things that _haven't_ been done before.

--
"Always look on the bright side of life."
To reply by email, remove the small snack from address.

On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 15:51:45 GMT, (Russell
Wallace) wrote:

technology we'll need for self-sufficiency. Until then, let's work on
things that _haven't_ been done before.

Like for instance...? :-)

(Russell Wallace) wrote:
I'll answer that question with another one: why is it that we all
think Apollo was a wonderful achievement, while many of us (myself
included) think ISS should just be let deorbit rather than waste any
more money on it? What's the difference?

Because the belief that progress is only progress when it's
spectacular and important and uplifting and generates a huge 'wow
cool' response persists even among those who should know better.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"Russell Wallace" wrote:

I'll answer that question with another one: why is it that we all
think Apollo was a wonderful achievement, while many of us (myself
included) think ISS should just be let deorbit rather than waste any
more money on it? What's the difference?

Will it ever be time to go back to the moon? Yes - when we can build a
self-sufficient colony in space, rather than just look around and go
home again.

There's far more to space station than most people see. If we are ever to
move into space to stay we need to know how to build things in space -
complex things. We need to see what breaks, what works, for how long? You
are not seeing (or underestimating) the things we are learning from building
ISS that are more important in the long run than simply doing experiments.
ISS is itself a huge experiment, a prototype, a lab. There's no other way to
get the invaluable real world experience apart from doing it. And, we are
doing it in LEO - not on the moon.

Jon

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 19:16:38 -0500, in a place far, far away, "Jon
Berndt" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


Will it ever be time to go back to the moon? Yes - when we can build a
self-sufficient colony in space, rather than just look around and go
home again.

There's far more to space station than most people see. If we are ever to
move into space to stay we need to know how to build things in space -
complex things. We need to see what breaks, what works, for how long? You
are not seeing (or underestimating) the things we are learning from building
ISS that are more important in the long run than simply doing experiments.
ISS is itself a huge experiment, a prototype, a lab. There's no other way to
get the invaluable real world experience apart from doing it. And, we are
doing it in LEO - not on the moon.

I suspect that, like Shuttle, the main lessons learned from ISS is how
*not* to do things...

"Rand Simberg" wrote:

I suspect that, like Shuttle, the main lessons learned from ISS is how
*not* to do things...

By definition almost - yes, that's the idea. Or, to validate things that we
haven't yet proved will work well.

If you were to make a list of the things, the concepts, the ideas, the
technologies and hardware that goes into something like ISS and shuttle
you'd end up with a completely unbalanced list of things that work (many)
and things that don't (relatively few). But surely the idea is to find out
those critical things that don't work and improve those. The past forty
years have already lead to those things that work.

Jon

There IS things that can be done in low earth orbit, for one thing, on the
shuttle as a test, they where able to make micro beads that are used in
insultin pumps as filters, they where able to make them not only smaller,
but rounder too. I belive there's been batchs of them made and on the ISS
they could be made almost daily. Spacecraft parts could be sent into orbit
to the ISS and they could be put together and then even launched from nearby
the ISS. What we need is a full time large verson of the ISS as steping off
place to outbound crafts.

It was the DIPSTICKS in washington dc that killed the apollo program, just
when they started doing real work instead of just PR work, they where
stopped. If it had kept on going, we're have a moon base going already.

Every year those dipsticks will say "Oh, we're giving NASA another 20
billion for funding" but what they fail to say is that already CUT NASA's
budget by 25 billion the year before.

--


"And for the second time in four million years, the monolith awoke."
Arthur C.Clarke 2062dyssey three

SIAR
http://starlords.netfirms.com
Telescope Buyers FAQ
http://home.inreach.com/starlord
Bishop's Car Fund
http://www.bishopcarfund.netfirms.com/

"Russell Wallace" wrote in message
...
[crossposting reduced to groups for which this is at least somewhat
on-topic.]

I'll answer that question with another one: why is it that we all
think Apollo was a wonderful achievement, while many of us (myself
included) think ISS should just be let deorbit rather than waste any
more money on it? What's the difference?

The difference is that with Apollo, _people were wise enough to quit
while they were ahead_. Fly six missions - enough to prove it wasn't a
fluke, and do everything that needed doing - and bow out gracefully
before the sparkle wears off.

_A_ space station (i.e. Skylab) was worth doing, to answer the
questions "can people stay healthy without gravity?" and "is there
anything useful or fun for people to do in low earth orbit?".
(Unfortunately the answer to both questions is no, but that's the way
the cookie crumbles; it was worth finding out.) Endlessly repeating
the "put a cramped unhealthy camping trailer in low orbit for no
apparent reason" thing just turns it from a great adventure into
something the world can see is a dreary, pointless mess. Sending
people back to the moon right now would do the same to Apollo - it
would spoil the memory. Don't do it.

Will it ever be time to go back to the moon? Yes - when we can build a
self-sufficient colony in space, rather than just look around and go
home again. Transport (better ships, cheaper access to space) is _not_
the limiting factor on that. If we want to bring closer the time for a
return to the moon - to stay - then the thing to do is work on the
technology we'll need for self-sufficiency. Until then, let's work on
things that _haven't_ been done before.

--
"Always look on the bright side of life."
To reply by email, remove the small snack from address.


---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.775 / Virus Database: 522 - Release Date: 10/8/04

starlord wrote:

There IS things that can be done in low earth orbit, for one thing, on the
shuttle as a test, they where able to make micro beads that are used in
[insulin] pumps as filters, they where able to make them not only smaller,
but rounder too.

I think you are misremembering. There was a very early experiment to make
monodisperse latex spheres as electron microscope calibration targets.
That's not something there's a large demand for, and doesn't have anything
to do with insulin.

Paul

(Russell Wallace) wrote:

_A_ space station (i.e. Skylab) was worth doing, to answer the
questions "can people stay healthy without gravity?" and "is there
anything useful or fun for people to do in low earth orbit?".
(Unfortunately the answer to both questions is no, but that's the way
the cookie crumbles; it was worth finding out.) Endlessly repeating
the "put a cramped unhealthy camping trailer in low orbit for no
apparent reason" thing just turns it from a great adventure into
something the world can see is a dreary, pointless mess.

Half (at least) the point of the ISS was political - not just
co-operation between the US and the Russians but actual co-dependence.
And that was an experiment worth doing.

--
Martin

Jon Berndt wrote:
"Rand Simberg" wrote:
I suspect that, like Shuttle, the main lessons learned from ISS is how
*not* to do things...

By definition almost - yes, that's the idea. Or, to validate things that we
haven't yet proved will work well.

If you were to make a list of the things, the concepts, the ideas, the
technologies and hardware that goes into something like ISS and shuttle
you'd end up with a completely unbalanced list of things that work (many)
and things that don't (relatively few). But surely the idea is to find out
those critical things that don't work and improve those. The past forty
years have already lead to those things that work.

Hardware doesn't hardly come into it. One of the lessons
of both ISS and the Shuttle is that orginization and
design is critical. It's not the little bits, it's the
way they're put together and the way things are run.

Interestingly though, NASA learned a lot of lessons from
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Shuttle, Shuttle-Mir,
and ISS. One of the lessons NASA has yet to learn is how
to apply the lessons it has learned from the past, both
good and bad. NASA routinely makes the same major
mistakes again and again and again.