Space Policy: Why Mars should be our top priority.

"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

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.


Agreed. And I can line up several experts that claim a return to the moon is a
waste of time and money. The fact that you choose to ignore them does not mean
they do not exist.

http://planetary.org/programs/projec...y/roadmap.html
http://planetary.org/special/vision/results.html
http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...html?series=35
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0801/18avweek/

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.

There is no need to send people to the moon either. Tele-robotics will work
just fine on the Moon, unlike the planets, because the round trip
communication delay is on the order of 2 seconds. People can work around that
very effectively. A 20 min to 2 hour delay makes that impossible for
planetary exploration via tele-robotics. You have to rely on some amount of AI
in your probe programming. And that is not easy. And tele-robotic exploration
will be far far cheaper than a moonbase. In fact after the political will to
stay on the moon is gone, tele- robotics may be the only remaining viable
option that will allow NASA to "afford" a long-term lunar exploration program.

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.

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what could be done
with tele-robtic explorers.

But more to your point, sure if surface exploration is the end all and be all
of exploration. But I disagree with that as well. Much can also be learned
from orbit. Think about the ability to alter the experiment or create new ones
based on the results obtained during observations. That is very hard to do
with unmanned probes. I mean if we can't get to the surface should we not even
*ever* attempt future manned missions to Jupiter or the outer planets someday?


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.

How do you know that definitively? Maybe if we had an orbiting laboratory the
science would present itself?

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.

OK. The page you pointed me to didn't really put much of a case forward for
lunar exploration. It was more of a lament about the decline of the US
aerospace industry (a lament I share), but I'll poke around a bit.


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.

We'll see. Esp. if moon fever takes over NASA as I have a feeling it will.
These things tend to snowball.


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.

OK, I'll defer to your expertise and accept that. And more's the pity. We
should have downscaled SSF into something we (US) could have used more
productively. And in-space construction is one of those functions we should
not have sacrificed.

All the more reason to get cracking on building useful space infrastructure in
LEO now, rather than another one-off to the moon that the politicians will
abandon when the polls tell them to. In the meantime we will have squandered
another 25 years and more billions of dollars before getting back to building
the kind of infrastructure that we really need.

BTW Jorge, thanks for engaging me in this instead of succumbing to the
temptation of writing me off as a crank. I'm the first to admit that space in
not my profession nor my area of expertise. But I learn a bit every day and I
highly value the input from those like yourself who are involved. Thank you.

Dave

David Spain wrote:

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what
could be done with tele-robtic explorers.

Which teleoperated rovers? The ones of 2050 or 2060?

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

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

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

(Derek Lyons) writes:

David Spain wrote:

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what
could be done with tele-robtic explorers.

Which teleoperated rovers? The ones of 2050 or 2060?

D.
--

Well after we've squandered away the years and billions on
Constellation and a moon base that the Chinese have taken
over in our absence, I'd say 2075!

Of course we could have it alot sooner if we'd just choose to.
It's all about the choices we're making today.

I don't think this will go down in history as one of President W's
better decisions either.

Dave

"David Spain" wrote in message
...
(Derek Lyons) writes:

David Spain wrote:

I disagree about the cost effectiveness for the moon given what
could be done with tele-robtic explorers.

Which teleoperated rovers? The ones of 2050 or 2060?

Well after we've squandered away the years and billions on
Constellation and a moon base that the Chinese have taken
over in our absence, I'd say 2075!

Of course we could have it alot sooner if we'd just choose to.
It's all about the choices we're making today.

I don't think this will go down in history as one of President W's
better decisions either.

I don't know why people keep bringing up the Chinese. We're not in a "moon
race" with the Chinese! We won the "moon race" back in 1969. If the
Chinese put people on the moon before the end of this year, they'd still be
40 years too late!

The Chinese would be extremely lucky to put a man on the moon in time for
the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The Chinese space
program is moving very slowly and very deliberately. It's a source of
national pride, not a means to compete with the US. The space race of the
1960's is over and done. The US won, in case you hadn't noticed.

Jeff
--
"Many things that were acceptable in 1958 are no longer acceptable today.
My own standards have changed too." -- Freeman Dyson

Jeff Findley wrote:
I don't know why people keep bringing up the Chinese. We're not in a "moon
race" with the Chinese! We won the "moon race" back in 1969. If the
Chinese put people on the moon before the end of this year, they'd still be
40 years too late!

The point is that they'd be there and we are not. Not only are we not, but
we no longer even possess the means of getting there. I can't help but feel
this is what is really driving the 'back to the moon' project. It's just another
political stunt to prove our hegemony. Personally I could care less if the
Chinese are on the moon or not. I'd rather focus on the science.


The Chinese would be extremely lucky to put a man on the moon in time for
the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

That is true. I would also be surprised. Also, I don't think the Chinese care
about our anniversaries.

The Chinese space
program is moving very slowly and very deliberately. It's a source of
national pride, not a means to compete with the US.

You can't be serious. The military-industrial complex needed to support a
space program is exactly what you need to project space power and hegemony,
in case you hadn't noticed. Rule the high ground and you rule. This very
thing is what is keeping the strategic planners at the Pentagon up at night
and probably a major reason why we're so willingly de-focusing our manned
space program. Fear is a great motivator, but not necessarily a good one.

Dave

"David Spain" wrote in message
...
Jeff Findley wrote:
The Chinese space program is moving very slowly and very deliberately.
It's a source of national pride, not a means to compete with the US.

You can't be serious. The military-industrial complex needed to support a
space program is exactly what you need to project space power and
hegemony,
in case you hadn't noticed. Rule the high ground and you rule. This very
thing is what is keeping the strategic planners at the Pentagon up at
night
and probably a major reason why we're so willingly de-focusing our manned
space program. Fear is a great motivator, but not necessarily a good one.

Certainly spysats, comsats, weather sats, and missile launch detection sats
are important military tools, but none of these has *anything* to do with a
manned space program. Perhaps they can share some infrastructure on the
ground, but that's about it.

The US dabbled in this (MOL, X-20, and etc) and came up empty handed. The
Soviets similarly played with manned military space stations and have little
to show for it. There may be value in having man-tended satellites (e.g.
similar to Hubble), bit having people on the same platform 24/7 is a stupid
idea.

Anything military beyond LEO and man-tended doesn't even make sense.
Military lunar bases would be absolute folly. There is ab-zero reason for
anything like that.

Jeff
--
"Many things that were acceptable in 1958 are no longer acceptable today.
My own standards have changed too." -- Freeman Dyson

Jeff Findley wrote:
Certainly spysats, comsats, weather sats, and missile launch detection sats
are important military tools, but none of these has *anything* to do with a
manned space program. Perhaps they can share some infrastructure on the
ground, but that's about it.


Are you kidding? Wasn't the Atlas that launched Mercury derived from an Atlas
ICBM? The Titan that launched Gemini also existed an an ICBM. Are you saying that
the man-rated versions of these shared absolutely *no* tooling/hardware/fuel
with their weaponized cousins? Was not every manned rocket launch, regardless
of its lofty goals, also an implicit demonstration of what we could do with our
strategic missiles? Kept fresh in the minds of our adversaries every few months
when the news tracked the next launch of Mercury X, Gemini Y or Apollo Z?

If I can get the public to go along with the taxation necessary to support a manned
space program, why not divert some of that $$$ to the military?

I doubt that happened much in the US program, where I think in most cases
the military use preceded the civilian use, but I don't think the Chinese will
be that particular in their accounting....

The US dabbled in this (MOL, X-20, and etc) and came up empty handed. The
Soviets similarly played with manned military space stations and have little
to show for it. There may be value in having man-tended satellites (e.g.
similar to Hubble), bit having people on the same platform 24/7 is a stupid
idea.


Sure, the track record for "military spaceflight" is not a good one agreed.

But it was Apollo the kept the bucks gleefully rolling into the aerospace
contractors that certainly had to have helped the military infrastructure.

We get into the 70's and the manned program cuts and lo and behold we start
seeing the consolidations and layoffs in the aerospace/defense sector and the
beginnings of huge cost overruns in military programs. Coincidence?

Anything military beyond LEO and man-tended doesn't even make sense.
Military lunar bases would be absolute folly. There is ab-zero reason for
anything like that.

Jeff

Agreed. But to keep popular support for the taxation needed to support a
military/industrial/space infrastructure you need to do something to boost
national pride besides just building missiles and satellites. The moon,
hey, now that's the ticket!

Dave

Jeff Findley wrote:
Anything military beyond LEO and man-tended doesn't even make sense.
Military lunar bases would be absolute folly. There is ab-zero reason for
anything like that.


That never stopped the military before, did it? ;-)


Pat

David Spain wrote:

Rule the high ground and you rule.

This is one of the simplest, most powerful, most enduring -- and as
usually interpreted, most utterly mistaken -- ideas of the space age.

Space *is* "high ground" in terms of observation and information
(corresponding to the classic "I want an observer up on that hill, or
observation balloon, or U-2, to see what the other guy is up to"). For
decades, military surveillance, communications, GPS etc. satellites
have delivered good value per buck gathering and relaying massless
*data*, just as their civilian counterparts do, and for the same
reasons.

Space is *not* "high ground" in terms of basing or using actual
weapons that involve serious mass, serious (and massive) power
supplies, and if manned all the extra hardware required for that.
(corresponding to the classic "I want a hilltop fortress that will be
a bitch to assault"). Nobody has ever come up with a proposal that is
enough better than existing ground-, sea-, or air-based assets to
justify (1) the much greater cost of getting it into space, and (2)
its high visibility and vulnerability once there.

That might change with a dramatic reduction in launch cost, but
there's no reason to believe China (or anyone else) has that up their
sleeve, or that the reduction would come as a sudden and unanswerable
surprise: "Hello, world! Liangshao Luthor here in my 10,000-ton
armored nuclear Xray-laser-equipped orbital battle station capable of
instantly spotting and destroying anybody else's launch from anywhere.
Guess what? I RULE!!!"

For 50 years now some fairly prosaic facts and a feverish fantasy have
coexisted. The facts are that space provides useful and cost-effective
military *information and communication*. As Lyndon Johnson observed
back in the 1960s, that actually cooled the worst of the strategic
arms race by reducing both sides' fears of surprise.

The fantasy is "OMG the Soviets/Americans/Chinese are RIGHT OVER OUR
HEADS with bombs and Dyna-Soar attack craft and FOBS and ICBM-killing
pebbles and rods from God and zap rays!"... none of which ever seem to
actually, y'know, *happen*. Maybe because the generals can do the math
and discover that it just ain't worth it compared to less exotic
alternatives?

Sorry, but your "...project space power and hegemony... Rule the high
ground and you rule... keeping the strategic planners at the Pentagon
up at night" strikes me as owing a lot more to the fantasy than to the
facts.

-Monte Davis

Monte Davis wrote:

David Spain wrote:

Rule the high ground and you rule.

This is one of the simplest, most powerful, most enduring -- and as
usually interpreted, most utterly mistaken -- ideas of the space age.

You should write a book on these pernicious memes... Lord knows
you've posted enough of these mini-essays over the years.

And you should post more often.

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

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

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