Question About media covarage!

Hello my name is Tyrone K. "Ty" I'm 16 years old & I live in Ky. I love astronomy... I think it's the most intesting subect in the world. I also like photography & skateboarding. My dad is in Iraq & I'm so PROUD of him. Both my parents are in the Us Army. But my dad is the one over there right now. When I was little, like 5 for my birthday as a present I was given a telescope science I keep talking about the planets & space so much to who ever would listen... well as I said I'm 16 now & I ABSLOUTLY LOVE astronomy. SO ok here come my question......
I went on NASA.gov & I found out there are some great missions coming up but I want to know do you guys know if any of them will be broadcast on television? I don't remember if any of the other missions lately have been bradcast & that worried me. I would really think it would be cool to see some of the newest mission broadcast.

Hey well it's just me again! I found out that I get the NASA channel on direct tv! I 'm so HAPPY. IT's channel 376 for you that care. I didn't know I got it so I was worried I wouldn't get to see the new launches but I DO! SO COOL! Thanks for looking at my post. SORRY NO one posted back! Alright going to drive my parents abusloutly nuts & watch the NASA channel in the living room. Talk to you all later. LATER DAYS!

astronomyguyty wrote:

Hey well it's just me again! I found out that I get the NASA channel on
direct tv! I 'm so HAPPY. IT's channel 376 for you that care. I didn't
know I got it so I was worried I wouldn't get to see the new launches
but I DO! SO COOL! Thanks for looking at my post. SORRY NO one posted
back! Alright going to drive my parents abusloutly nuts & watch the
NASA channel in the living room. Talk to you all later. LATER DAYS!



Oh, yes- the NASA channel...home of those great early 1960's
documentaries about man's future in space with the primitive B&W
animation and the ethereal music to go with them.
Hit the Way-Back machine, Mr. Peabody....
"This is Saturn V...there are many questions to be answered before we
can build Saturn V.
Can a program that's going to peak out at around three to four percent
of the entire national budget be justified by the promise that it might
fetch back several hundreds of pounds of rocks from the Moon?
Can a former member of the Nazi rocket building program be successfully
sold to America as our new hero...despite his former involvement in a
slave labor camp and the death of thousand of slave laborers in it?
Can President Kennedy successfully move Eisenhower's military-industrial
complex into equally profitable peaceful ends?
These are the questions we must ask ourselves before we build Saturn V...."
Been there, saw that.

Pat

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
astronomyguyty wrote:

Hey well it's just me again! I found out that I get the NASA channel on
direct tv! I 'm so HAPPY. IT's channel 376 for you that care. I didn't
know I got it so I was worried I wouldn't get to see the new launches
but I DO! SO COOL! Thanks for looking at my post. SORRY NO one posted
back! Alright going to drive my parents abusloutly nuts & watch the
NASA channel in the living room. Talk to you all later. LATER DAYS!



Oh, yes- the NASA channel...home of those great early 1960's
documentaries about man's future in space with the primitive B&W
animation and the ethereal music to go with them.
Hit the Way-Back machine, Mr. Peabody....
"This is Saturn V...there are many questions to be answered before we
can build Saturn V.
Can a program that's going to peak out at around three to four percent
of the entire national budget be justified by the promise that it might
fetch back several hundreds of pounds of rocks from the Moon?

We should have kept using Saturn V; it is still one of the
best launch vehicles made. And it is not the pile of rocks
brought back from the moon, but what we have learned from
them, which matters. We would have learned much more if
we had not canceled the last few Apollo trips, and we would
have done well to start a lunar base which could provide us
with still more knowledge. Using the money instead to get
people on welfare to have larger families, in an already
overpopulated world, which is what we have been doing, is
far worse.

Can a former member of the Nazi rocket building program be successfully
sold to America as our new hero...despite his former involvement in a
slave labor camp and the death of thousand of slave laborers in it?

How much was he responsible for? There is no evidence that
he recruited or mistreated the workers. That is not the
way to get things done.

As for his ability, he fairly quickly got an American object
in orbit after Eisenhower's stupid Vanguard attempts kept
failing, using off the shelf military rockets not intended
for the purpose.

Can President Kennedy successfully move Eisenhower's military-industrial
complex into equally profitable peaceful ends?

The military-industrial complex was a figment of a stupid
general's imagination.

These are the questions we must ask ourselves before we build Saturn V...."
Been there, saw that.

The move to "peaceful" research after the end of the Cold
War has almost destroyed basic research in the US. The
military found that basic researchers could do applied
work with the hidebound applied researchers could not do;
they had to thing "outside the box" to be theorists.
This continued during the Cold War because of the fear of
this being successful on the other side.

Meanwhile, the government support of research has destroyed
the universities' basis for their support, and it is in very
bad shape.

Do not think, however, that I want government investment in
space. I want to allow those who believe in man's development
in space to be able to support it instead of supporting the
ill-designed welfare programs, and to do it without government
interference. The same holds in education.

George Bernard Shaw wrote (from memory):

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.




--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Herman Rubin wrote:

Can a program that's going to peak out at around three to four percent
of the entire national budget be justified by the promise that it might
fetch back several hundreds of pounds of rocks from the Moon?



We should have kept using Saturn V; it is still one of the
best launch vehicles made. And it is not the pile of rocks
brought back from the moon, but what we have learned from
them, which matters. We would have learned much more if
we had not canceled the last few Apollo trips,


What's not widely known is that NASA itself didn't have much of a
problem with the later flights getting canceled; after Apollo 13 they
realized that what they were doing inherently had a lot of risk
associated with it, and if they kept it up for enough flights they were
probably going to lose a crew sooner or later, so they thought it was
better to end up on a high note, and ditch the later flights.

and we would
have done well to start a lunar base which could provide us
with still more knowledge.


Very expensive, and barring the development of some sort of super rover
or something similar to the 2001 Moonbus, you'd be very limited in
regards to the area you could examine- say a circle just ten or twenty
miles out from the base.
That's pretty minuscule in comparison to the total area of the Lunar
surface.
The problem with the rover or rocket bus idea is that you'd have to send
two everywhere together in case one broke down, so that its crew
wouldn't be stranded beyond walking distance from the base.

Using the money instead to get
people on welfare to have larger families, in an already
overpopulated world, which is what we have been doing, is
far worse.



Welfare doesn't cost as much as most people think:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-runawaywelfare.htm
In fact, in 1993, it was dwarfed by defense spending, which was itself
put in second place by Social Security:

"Argument

One of the most popular myths is that welfare is a serious drag on the
economy. Actually, it barely registers on the radar screen. The most
vilified form of welfare is Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC), which allegedly gives poor mothers a financial incentive to
avoid work and have babies. Yet in 1992, AFDC formed only 1 percent of
the combined federal and state budgets. Food stamps also took up 1
percent. Both programs cost $24.9 billion each, comprising 1 percent
each of the combined federal, state and local budget of $2,487 billion. (1)

Comparing the size of federal AFDC to other federal programs puts a
great deal in perspective:

Federal AFDC Expenditures as Compared to Federal Spending in Other Areas
(1993) (2)

Agency $ billions
--------------------------
AFDC 12
Medicaid 76
Medicare 131
Defense 281
Social Security 305 "





Can a former member of the Nazi rocket building program be successfully
sold to America as our new hero...despite his former involvement in a
slave labor camp and the death of thousand of slave laborers in it?



How much was he responsible for? There is no evidence that
he recruited or mistreated the workers.


Oh, boy, do you need to do some reading!
http://www.answers.com/topic/wernher-von-braun
He did indeed recruit some of the Mittlewerk workers with the aid of his
staff from Buchenwald, and admitted to it. He also visited the
Mittlewerk itself on several occasions, and said he found the conditions
there "repulsive" but never witnessed any beatings or executions-
survivors of he factory tell a different story- of von Braun walking
seemingly unconcerned through piles of corpses and examining a piece of
a V-2, and declaring hat it had been sabotaged during
construction...which led to the assembly workers who made it being taken
away and hung.

That is not the
way to get things done.



At the Mittlewerk things got done by a very simple method: You do what
your told to do or at the very least you get no food, and it then goes
up a sliding scale through beatings, and ends up with you hanging under
the portable gallows that could be wheeled from one part of the complex
to another as it was needed.

As for his ability, he fairly quickly got an American object
in orbit after Eisenhower's stupid Vanguard attempts kept
failing, using off the shelf military rockets not intended
for the purpose.



Can President Kennedy successfully move Eisenhower's military-industrial
complex into equally profitable peaceful ends?



The military-industrial complex was a figment of a stupid
general's imagination.



Jeeze, I thought he handled Operation Overlord fairly competently when
all was said and done.
He also came up with one of the really useful contributions to the whole
nation with a military-based project in the "Defense Highway System"
which is where all of our excellent interstate highways got started
(those overpasses on the highways were originally going to have fallout
shelters under them BTW) which not only made the large scale shipment of
goods via truck possible, thereby breaking the monopoly of the railways
on the movement of cargo around the United States, but also made it
possibly for Americans to vacation in far-off sections of their own
country with comparative ease and economy

These are the questions we must ask ourselves before we build Saturn V...."
Been there, saw that.



The move to "peaceful" research after the end of the Cold
War has almost destroyed basic research in the US. The
military found that basic researchers could do applied
work with the hidebound applied researchers could not do;
they had to thing "outside the box" to be theorists.
This continued during the Cold War because of the fear of
this being successful on the other side.

Meanwhile, the government support of research has destroyed
the universities' basis for their support, and it is in very
bad shape.


The problem being that if the military funds the universities research,
they are going to want something at the end of it with military
potential, like the SLAM nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile; a great
(and very expensive piece) of military-funded research, but without any
practical purpose in the civilian world due to the fact that the whole
missile would become radioactive shortly after you revved the engine up,
so that nuclear ramjet powered airliners were going to be a non-starter.
Which is all for the good, as I'd hate to see an Al-Queda terrorist run
one of those into a building at Mach 3.

Do not think, however, that I want government investment in
space. I want to allow those who believe in man's development
in space to be able to support it instead of supporting the
ill-designed welfare programs, and to do it without government
interference.


Well, such high hopes are going to require several billion dollars to
bring to fruition, so unless Bill Gates has some pocket change burning a
hole in his pants....

The same holds in education.

George Bernard Shaw wrote (from memory):

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;
the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.



I don't know if I'd call thermonuclear weapons, anthrax spore fast
breeder tanks, and binary nerve gas bombs "progress".
More like annihilation waiting for a chance to occur.
All in all, I liked the highway system better. :-D

Pat

astronomyguyty wrote:

Hello my name is Tyrone K. "Ty" I'm 16 years old & I live in Ky. I love
astronomy... I think it's the most intesting subect in the world. I also
like photography & skateboarding. My dad is in Iraq & I'm so PROUD of
him. Both my parents are in the Us Army. But my dad is the one over
there right now.


Please give him my best wishes for a speedy and safe return.

When I was little, like 5 for my birthday as a present
I was given a telescope.


When I was in my early teens, and my older brother was at a firebase
outside of Hue, Vietnam*, he sent us a catalog of things that you could
purchase at knockdown cost if you had a family member serving in the
U.S. military; I got hold of a magnificent 4" diameter refractor
telescope for $100.00 this way, and had an absolute ball looking at the
sky with it (I should have kept it- this would cost you around $600 to
$700 dollars now).

science I keep talking about the planets & space
so much to who ever would listen... well as I said I'm 16 now & I
ABSLOUTLY LOVE astronomy. SO ok here come my question......
I went on NASA.gov & I found out there are some great missions coming
up but I want to know do you guys know if any of them will be broadcast
on television? I don't remember if any of the other missions lately
have been bradcast & that worried me. I would really think it would be
cool to see some of the newest mission broadcast.



Okay: Let's work out a strategy for making that occur, as your dad would
probably say.
1.) Check to see if your local cable channel carries NASA TV; ours did
despite the small size of our town (15,000), but that may be due to the
fact that Rick Hieb, the Shuttle astronaut, is a native of Jamestown,
North Dakota.
2.) If that's not the case, then it's time to a tactical shift to a
defensible fall-back position... go over to NASA's main website listing:
http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/live/nasatv.htm
....if you've got the computer bandwidth to handle it, or alternatively
to the main NASA website listing for all of their various resources:
http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1 to find info and
downloads on all of the various missions and projects they've got going.
Most of the unmanned missions have their own homepages, such as the Mars
Rovers:
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html
....and the Cassini Saturn mission: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
Two websites I most heartily recommend are the amazing NASA J-Track 3D:
http://science.nasa.gov/Realtime/jtr.../JTrack3d.html
Which offers a zoomable and rotatable real-time view of the major
satellites and rocket boosters and where they are in relation to your
hometown so you can watch them cross the sky after sunset or before
sunrise... expand this to full size on your computer screen, and you'll
have something pretty close to the main display screen at Space Command,
with the ability to pivot to any point on the Earth's surface, and the
ability to zoom from out beyond the communications satellites at over
22,000 miles up over the equator to those just skimming the atmosphere,
and Mark Wade's magnificent "Encyclopedia Astronautic" website- which
can take weeks to go through, and has pretty much everything about
everything regarding the history of space exploration:
http://www.astronautix.com/index.html
Hope this helps.

Pat

*101st Airborne Division, and came home safe and uninjured.

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:

Can a program that's going to peak out at around three to four percent
of the entire national budget be justified by the promise that it might
fetch back several hundreds of pounds of rocks from the Moon?



We should have kept using Saturn V; it is still one of the
best launch vehicles made. And it is not the pile of rocks
brought back from the moon, but what we have learned from
them, which matters. We would have learned much more if
we had not canceled the last few Apollo trips,


What's not widely known is that NASA itself didn't have much of a
problem with the later flights getting canceled; after Apollo 13 they
realized that what they were doing inherently had a lot of risk
associated with it, and if they kept it up for enough flights they were
probably going to lose a crew sooner or later, so they thought it was
better to end up on a high note, and ditch the later flights.

This is why it should be done without government support
or interference. Many men were lost in exploration
projects of all types, with few problems, even if they
were government run. Any frontier has risks.

Behold the turtle. If he sticketh not out the neck,
he maketh no progress. It has been this way for mankind
farther back than we have records.

and we would
have done well to start a lunar base which could provide us
with still more knowledge.


Very expensive, and barring the development of some sort of super rover
or something similar to the 2001 Moonbus, you'd be very limited in
regards to the area you could examine- say a circle just ten or twenty
miles out from the base.

It is not necessary to have such limited ideas. And if you
had such a limited base, which mirrors for solar power, more
could be built on the spot.

That's pretty minuscule in comparison to the total area of the Lunar
surface.
The problem with the rover or rocket bus idea is that you'd have to send
two everywhere together in case one broke down, so that its crew
wouldn't be stranded beyond walking distance from the base.

See the above.

Using the money instead to get
people on welfare to have larger families, in an already
overpopulated world, which is what we have been doing, is
far worse.



Welfare doesn't cost as much as most people think:
http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-runawaywelfare.htm
In fact, in 1993, it was dwarfed by defense spending, which was itself
put in second place by Social Security:

"Argument

One of the most popular myths is that welfare is a serious drag on the
economy. Actually, it barely registers on the radar screen. The most
vilified form of welfare is Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC), which allegedly gives poor mothers a financial incentive to
avoid work and have babies. Yet in 1992, AFDC formed only 1 percent of
the combined federal and state budgets. Food stamps also took up 1
percent. Both programs cost $24.9 billion each, comprising 1 percent
each of the combined federal, state and local budget of $2,487 billion. (1)

Comparing the size of federal AFDC to other federal programs puts a
great deal in perspective:

Federal AFDC Expenditures as Compared to Federal Spending in Other Areas
(1993) (2)

Agency $ billions
--------------------------
AFDC 12
Medicaid 76
Medicare 131
Defense 281
Social Security 305 "

Medicare and Medicaid are pure welfare. At least 1/3 of
Social Insecurity is welfare. Subsidized housing is
welfare. The school lunch program is welfare. There
are many other government projects which are welfare.
Any time there is a means test for a benefit, the benefit
is welfare. Any time money is taxed and used to give
benefits to others, that is welfare. The reason not all
of Social Insecurity is welfare is that those who paid
in more get more, up to a certain point.

The Roman Republic was brought down by bread and circuses,
and the founding fathers knew this. They also thought the
Athenian Republic was so destroyed.

All welfare eligibility rules are high-rate income taxes.

--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Herman Rubin wrote:



What's not widely known is that NASA itself didn't have much of a
problem with the later flights getting canceled; after Apollo 13 they
realized that what they were doing inherently had a lot of risk
associated with it, and if they kept it up for enough flights they were
probably going to lose a crew sooner or later, so they thought it was
better to end up on a high note, and ditch the later flights.



This is why it should be done without government support
or interference.


Again easy to say, but where exactly is the money supposed to come from?
Even developing SpaceX's Falcon was a multimillion dollar project, and
it's just a launcher for small unmanned satellites.
To develop even a LEO manned space launch system is going to take
several tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars and that's quite a
speculative investment to make for something that may or not pay off in
an monetary sense until several years or decades down the road.

Many men were lost in exploration
projects of all types, with few problems, even if they
were government run. Any frontier has risks.



And payoffs for the risks....if you're lucky, like the search for the
Northwest Passage that never panned out.
But voyages for the sake of pure exploration that received major
government funding weren't all that numerous, and were sometimes done
for reasons of purely political prestige for the sponsoring country,
like the exploration of the poles.
Private voyages of pure exploration were pretty darn rare, and were
limited to fairly low cost operations like climbing Everest.

Behold the turtle. If he sticketh not out the neck,
he maketh no progress.


And if he walketh into the desert to see what's there he may cooketh in
the sun (unless he can do a real quick job of evolving into a tortoise).
I don't have any problem with your basic premise that exploration for
the sake of exploration is a good thing- it is- but I'm concerned when
it starts becoming a major expense item in a nation's budget. Today on
the news they were mentioning that they wanted to throw half a billion
dollars at researching the causes of autism in children, but they
haven't been able to get Congress to approve the request yet. That's
considerable less money that the cost of one Space Shuttle launch
(around 600 million to 800 million dollars depending on who you ask),
and finding out what causes autism is probably going to be more
worthwhile in the long term than checking out how salamanders mate in
zero G.
It's about using your money wisely in a way that seems to offer the most
long-term benefits for the money spent.

It has been this way for mankind
farther back than we have records.



And it was done on the cheap- sometimes floating on a log over to the
nearby uninhabited island, or walking over the land bridge into North
America. One such very early voyage of exploration was made by the
people who would become the Australian Aborigines ...at the time the
voyage was a major success- Australia was a verdant land and the
population that settled it quickly swelled and became very populous
....but then something changed its climate (whether it was a natural
climate change or caused by the new inhabitants is still being argued)
and the population went into steep decline in a land made barren.
In this case, the exploration was a major mistake- the explorers and
their descendants would almost certainly have had a better life if they
had stayed home and not headed out to sea. The Moon makes even
Australia's outback look like Eden by comparison. On the other hand, the
explorer's who landed on Hawaii and Tahiti hit the jackpot for
themselves and their descendants.
But there's a major difference here; when these explorers set off on
their voyages, they never knew what to expect at the far end Was it
going to be a paradise, or was the island's volcano blow up and wipe
everybody out? The inhabitants of Thera might not have settled there if
they knew that several thousand years down the road they were probably
going to be the inspiration for the Atlantis myth.
On the other hand, we do have pretty accurate data on our two most
likely targets for manned exploration; the Moon and Mars...and not to
put too fine of a point on it, both of these places suck as far as easy
human habitation go.
So if you're going there you need a really good reason to do it, or the
ability to do it simply for curiosity's sake on the cheap.
And presently we don't have any pressing reason to go there, and it is
going to cost a hell of amount of money.



and we would
have done well to start a lunar base which could provide us
with still more knowledge.






Very expensive, and barring the development of some sort of super rover
or something similar to the 2001 Moonbus, you'd be very limited in
regards to the area you could examine- say a circle just ten or twenty
miles out from the base.



It is not necessary to have such limited ideas. And if you
had such a limited base, which mirrors for solar power, more
could be built on the spot.



Don't forget the weight of the mirror and habitat manufacturing factory-
the mirrors would be fairly easy, but habitat modules and the equipment
to outfit them would be anything but simple to manufacture in-situ.



That's pretty minuscule in comparison to the total area of the Lunar
surface.
The problem with the rover or rocket bus idea is that you'd have to send
two everywhere together in case one broke down, so that its crew
wouldn't be stranded beyond walking distance from the base.



See the above.



You've got 14,658,000 square miles of lunar surface to examine. That's
going to take a _lot_ of bases.
I don't know what exactly you expect to find that's interesting- mineral
content will vary from place to place, but you're still dealing with
lifeless rock covered in dust that is composed of highly abrasive
microscopic particles that will play havoc with your spacesuit (and
lungs) after a few days of exposure to it.


Agency $ billions
--------------------------
AFDC 12
Medicaid 76
Medicare 131
Defense 281
Social Security 305 "



Medicare and Medicaid are pure welfare.


Why don't you ask a senior citizen what they think of Medicare and
Medicaid being evil welfare?

At least 1/3 of
Social Insecurity is welfare. Subsidized housing is
welfare. The school lunch program is welfare. There
are many other government projects which are welfare.
Any time there is a means test for a benefit, the benefit
is welfare. Any time money is taxed and used to give
benefits to others, that is welfare. The reason not all
of Social Insecurity is welfare is that those who paid
in more get more, up to a certain point.

The Roman Republic was brought down by bread and circuses,
and the founding fathers knew this. They also thought the
Athenian Republic was so destroyed.


Actually it was the Peloponnesian Wars, but on the other hand the
Founding Fathers didn't know quite a few things about history or the
world outside of the American and European spheres. Thomas Jefferson
thought there were Mammoths somewhere out west, and if you'd told
Benjamin Franklin that you could blow up a whole city with a chunk of
metal smaller than a orange he'd have crapped his too tightly buttoned
pants. Then you could really spook him by starting on String Theory.
You know what's really interesting? Rome is supposed to be evil, but we
chose an eagle as our national symbol, started sticking Latin mottos on
everything, and made sure that the houses of the wealthy and powerful
had lots of columns in front of them.
We praise Greek democracy, yet we seemed by our actions to have had a
real hard-on for Imperial Rome since the founding of the republic
Now, I'm not saying that any of the founding fathers were closet
fascists...but here's a statue of George Washington from 1791 leaning on
a fasces:
http://www.history.org/Foundation/jo...wash_front.jpg
.....coyly keeping that decapitating ax head hidden under his coat (or is
it a toga?), in best emperor Augustus governing style.


All welfare eligibility rules are high-rate income taxes.



The poor? Send them to the arena, that's what I say. ;-)

Naughtius Maximus

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
Herman Rubin wrote:



What's not widely known is that NASA itself didn't have much of a
problem with the later flights getting canceled; after Apollo 13 they
realized that what they were doing inherently had a lot of risk
associated with it, and if they kept it up for enough flights they were
probably going to lose a crew sooner or later, so they thought it was
better to end up on a high note, and ditch the later flights.



This is why it should be done without government support
or interference.


Again easy to say, but where exactly is the money supposed to come from?
Even developing SpaceX's Falcon was a multimillion dollar project, and
it's just a launcher for small unmanned satellites.
To develop even a LEO manned space launch system is going to take
several tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars and that's quite a
speculative investment to make for something that may or not pay off in
an monetary sense until several years or decades down the road.

I am suggesting that non-profit organizations be allowed to
do this with essentially no government interference. There
are people with money to invest in the future, not in lowering
our population to serfs.

Many men were lost in exploration
projects of all types, with few problems, even if they
were government run. Any frontier has risks.



And payoffs for the risks....if you're lucky, like the search for the
Northwest Passage that never panned out.
But voyages for the sake of pure exploration that received major
government funding weren't all that numerous, and were sometimes done
for reasons of purely political prestige for the sponsoring country,
like the exploration of the poles.
Private voyages of pure exploration were pretty darn rare, and were
limited to fairly low cost operations like climbing Everest.

There are millions of people who believe that much of man's
future lies in space. They are not the poor, but they cannot
do much now without having to get the government's approval
for anything they do. Let them do it as people, not as agents
of the government, and you will see the money available.

In fact, at this time, one could not sell stock in a space
company; the SEC would rule it as too speculative. There is
some activity going on in the "entertainment" category, as
this is recognized to be highly speculative.

I doubt that any of the present governments want to have people
living and working in space. They want people under their control.

Behold the turtle. If he sticketh not out the neck,
he maketh no progress.


And if he walketh into the desert to see what's there he may cooketh in
the sun (unless he can do a real quick job of evolving into a tortoise).
I don't have any problem with your basic premise that exploration for
the sake of exploration is a good thing- it is- but I'm concerned when
it starts becoming a major expense item in a nation's budget. Today on
the news they were mentioning that they wanted to throw half a billion
dollars at researching the causes of autism in children, but they
haven't been able to get Congress to approve the request yet. That's
considerable less money that the cost of one Space Shuttle launch
(around 600 million to 800 million dollars depending on who you ask),
and finding out what causes autism is probably going to be more
worthwhile in the long term than checking out how salamanders mate in
zero G.
It's about using your money wisely in a way that seems to offer the most
long-term benefits for the money spent.

It has been this way for mankind
farther back than we have records.




And it was done on the cheap- sometimes floating on a log over to the
nearby uninhabited island, or walking over the land bridge into North
America.

Barring a MAJOR breakthrough, this will not happen in space.

One such very early voyage of exploration was made by the
people who would become the Australian Aborigines ...at the time the
voyage was a major success- Australia was a verdant land and the
population that settled it quickly swelled and became very populous
...but then something changed its climate (whether it was a natural
climate change or caused by the new inhabitants is still being argued)
and the population went into steep decline in a land made barren.
In this case, the exploration was a major mistake- the explorers and
their descendants would almost certainly have had a better life if they
had stayed home and not headed out to sea. The Moon makes even
Australia's outback look like Eden by comparison. On the other hand, the
explorer's who landed on Hawaii and Tahiti hit the jackpot for
themselves and their descendants.

Despite what you have been told, Hawaii was not that great.
Except for birds, fish, and coconuts, native Hawaiian biota
could not provide them with much of anything. They introduced
pigs, chickens, and taro.

If there is water on the moon, it will not be anywhere near as
bad as you think. If not, the moon is still a good base; it
has the materials for construction, and for low-cost launching,
as well as a better base for optical and radio astronomy.

Other possibilities are living in asteroids. A colleague of
mine in astrochemistry tells me that carbonaceous chondrites
are rich in phosphorus. This means that all that is needed
is hydrogen and nitrogen, and enough nitrogen is there to get
started.

But there's a major difference here; when these explorers set off on
their voyages, they never knew what to expect at the far end Was it
going to be a paradise, or was the island's volcano blow up and wipe
everybody out? The inhabitants of Thera might not have settled there if
they knew that several thousand years down the road they were probably
going to be the inspiration for the Atlantis myth.
On the other hand, we do have pretty accurate data on our two most
likely targets for manned exploration; the Moon and Mars...and not to
put too fine of a point on it, both of these places suck as far as easy
human habitation go.

Don't be so sure. If there is no water on the moon, and not
enough on Mars, these places can be at most bases. However,
the moon might be useful enough as a research and staging
station, and also useful for manufacturing. There are also
big space stations (O'Neill and other types) and near-earth
asteroids. Can we get enough hydrogen and nitrogen from comets?
The moon would be a much easier place to use to set out for
comet or asteroid mining.

So if you're going there you need a really good reason to do it, or the
ability to do it simply for curiosity's sake on the cheap.
And presently we don't have any pressing reason to go there, and it is
going to cost a hell of amount of money.

There is another reason, frontier. I do not expect a shortage
of volunteers, and if the government keeps out, of money.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558

Herman Rubin wrote:

I am suggesting that non-profit organizations be allowed to
do this with essentially no government interference. There
are people with money to invest in the future, not in lowering
our population to serfs.



I don't think there is any law against that nowadays; if a number of
people wanted to get together and build a manned orbital rocketship at
their own expense or via public donation, I doubt the government would
have any problem with that, provided that they had a safe place to
launch it from.
I would be concerned about a fly-by-night organization doing a "The
Producers" routine in this regard though- raising a huge amount of
money, putting it into a design that they know won't work, and then
saying "We tried really hard, but..." and pocketing the majority of the
cash. But proper financial oversight should avoid that problem.



Many men were lost in exploration
projects of all types, with few problems, even if they
were government run. Any frontier has risks.







And payoffs for the risks....if you're lucky, like the search for the
Northwest Passage that never panned out.
But voyages for the sake of pure exploration that received major
government funding weren't all that numerous, and were sometimes done
for reasons of purely political prestige for the sponsoring country,
like the exploration of the poles.
Private voyages of pure exploration were pretty darn rare, and were
limited to fairly low cost operations like climbing Everest.



There are millions of people who believe that much of man's
future lies in space. They are not the poor, but they cannot
do much now without having to get the government's approval
for anything they do. Let them do it as people, not as agents
of the government, and you will see the money available.



I think the new space tourism bill that passed Congress recently
specifically was aimed at making that happen. Burt Rutan privately built
a spacecraft and flew it successfully with minimum government
interference to win the Ansari X Prize; SpaceX is trying to get their
private Falcon 1 to work properly.
If you want to run a private space program via public subscription, more
power to you. Hell, I might kick in $5 or $10 toward such an endeavor
provided that the company doing it was on the up-and-up, and I got some
sort of certificate to hang on my wall.

In fact, at this time, one could not sell stock in a space
company; the SEC would rule it as too speculative. There is
some activity going on in the "entertainment" category, as
this is recognized to be highly speculative.



By selling stock, you just moved from the realm of a non-profit
organization into one being done to make a profit.

I doubt that any of the present governments want to have people
living and working in space. They want people under their control.



You know why? Space pirates, that's why! (cut to image of grizzled
codger with one eye in pressure suit, one-eyed, peg-legged parrot, also
wearing pressure suit, floating from umbilical cord attached to his
shoulder.) ;-)

And it was done on the cheap- sometimes floating on a log over to the
nearby uninhabited island, or walking over the land bridge into North
America.



Barring a MAJOR breakthrough, this will not happen in space.


Wait around; major breakthroughs happen every few years now. You can see
the first glimmers of a understanding of gravity that may provide a
breakthrough of major import a few decades down the line even nowadays.
To give you some idea of just how unpredictable progress is, I'm going
to send you a copy I made of a illustration from the 1917 edition of
"Our Wonder World" showing what they thought space exploration would be
like in the future, and the amazing speeds that the....well, I don't
know what exactly you'd call them....transatmospheric vehicles, I'd
guess, although that doesn't seem to do them justice somehow....would be
capable of achieving as they "invaded" space.

One such very early voyage of exploration was made by the


people who would become the Australian Aborigines ...at the time the
voyage was a major success- Australia was a verdant land and the
population that settled it quickly swelled and became very populous
...but then something changed its climate (whether it was a natural
climate change or caused by the new inhabitants is still being argued)
and the population went into steep decline in a land made barren.
In this case, the exploration was a major mistake- the explorers and
their descendants would almost certainly have had a better life if they
had stayed home and not headed out to sea. The Moon makes even
Australia's outback look like Eden by comparison. On the other hand, the
explorer's who landed on Hawaii and Tahiti hit the jackpot for
themselves and their descendants.



Despite what you have been told, Hawaii was not that great.
Except for birds, fish, and coconuts, native Hawaiian biota
could not provide them with much of anything. They introduced
pigs, chickens, and taro.



Beats the hell out of the Dry Tortugas though, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, the Dry Tortugas beats the hell out of the Moon in that
you at least have air to breath on the Dry Tortugas.

If there is water on the moon, it will not be anywhere near as
bad as you think.


That is still very, very, speculative. Arecibo still hasn't spotted it,
and those hydrogen detections might just be the end result of solar wind
hitting the lunar regolith up at the poles.
Even if there is water ice up there, you need it in sufficient
quantities and concentrations to be usable for a base.

If not, the moon is still a good base; it
has the materials for construction, and for low-cost launching,
as well as a better base for optical and radio astronomy.



If you end up having to lug water and oxygen all the way from Earth,
it's going to be very difficult to sustain. You're going to need a
pretty much closed ecosystem to make it doable.

Other possibilities are living in asteroids. A colleague of
mine in astrochemistry tells me that carbonaceous chondrites
are rich in phosphorus. This means that all that is needed
is hydrogen and nitrogen, and enough nitrogen is there to get
started.


Again, very steep start-up costs.
Note that Antarctica is fairly cheap and easy to get to, probably has
great mineral wealth of some sort or another hidden under the ice, and
yet there isn't any great drive to let people privatize it and start
moving there in the millions.
Nor do we have cities sitting on the continental shelf, despite the ease
of getting there also.
Cold temperatures prevented the Russians from ever fully exploiting
Northern Siberia for its mineral wealth, and Siberia has air to breath.



But there's a major difference here; when these explorers set off on
their voyages, they never knew what to expect at the far end Was it
going to be a paradise, or was the island's volcano blow up and wipe
everybody out? The inhabitants of Thera might not have settled there if
they knew that several thousand years down the road they were probably
going to be the inspiration for the Atlantis myth.
On the other hand, we do have pretty accurate data on our two most
likely targets for manned exploration; the Moon and Mars...and not to
put too fine of a point on it, both of these places suck as far as easy
human habitation go.



Don't be so sure. If there is no water on the moon, and not
enough on Mars,


Oh, Mars is probably chock full of water ice, especially at the poles.
It's the delta-v and time required to get there that are the problems
in its case.

Pat