Juno yes, Moonrise no

On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 22:19:41 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

To establish a base, of course. Why would anyone think that a lunar
base is about returning samples? Nobody returns samples of vacuum from
ISS... OK, maybe that's a bad example, but still.



I never have figured out what exactly the proposed lunar base is
supposed to do

It's a good thing you're not in charge, then.

- the astronauts gather up rocks and examine them I
suppose.

No, they do some of that, but largely they learn how to live on
another planet, only three days away instead of a few months, and they
start to develop propellant production capability.

That's going to get old after a month or so.
It doesn't make much sense for spaceship assembly, as it's located at
the bottom of a (admittedly shallow) gravity well, so that building
ships at an L point would save fuel. Even if the lunar base finds water
and can smelt lunar soil somehow, it's going to be a long time before it
can make anything as complex as a spacecraft given the possible funding
level the project is going to have.

No one proposes that spacecraft be manufactured, or even assembled on
the moon. Interesting strawman, though. The idea is to simply get
propellants there, not create a space industry.

To me, the whole thing doesn't make any real sense other than a
retrosalute to the days of America's soaring dreams and big budget
surpluses of the 1960's, in much the same way that Iraq is our
retrosalute to Vietnam.

Your opinion is noted, and ignored by the powers that be.

On 2 Jun 2005 21:30:30 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Jake McGuire"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

There's some sort of self-coherent case to be made for Mars
exploration, even after you ignore all of Zubrin's frontier BS.
Finding evidence of prior life (or especially current life) there would
be quite significant, and I think that the amount of exploration needed
for that might well be into the "cheaper to do with people" range.

But the moon? I hesitate to say "who cares," but I'm thinking it.

Obviously, many do.

I don't think anyone seriously suggests actually building spacecraft on
the moon, but sometimes they discuss extracting oxygen from the soil.
I've never seen anything to make me vaguely believe that this is
economically or technologically worthwhile in the service of any larger
end.

Reducing costs of getting propellant to the staging area (e.g., EML1)

In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:

To establish a base, of course. Why would anyone think that a lunar
base is about returning samples? Nobody returns samples of vacuum from
ISS... OK, maybe that's a bad example, but still.

I never have figured out what exactly the proposed lunar base is
supposed to do-

It's supposed to be a first step. It will give us experience living on
other worlds. It will cause us to develop lunar ISRU technologies. It
will provide people on-hand to deploy and maintain scientific
instruments. It will spur the development of transportation
technologies which then, one would hope, would trickle into the private
sector. It will provide a ready source of oxygen, for refueling (er,
oxidizing?) spacecraft in cislunar space. It will provide a source of
metals and other elements for building large space stations, even
settlements, well beyond what would be practical if all the mass had to
be hauled up from Earth.

And ultimately all these developments will mean that *I* can visit the
Moon someday in my lifetime if I so choose (and if I work hard and save
my pennies, of course). Or anyone else, of course. Maybe even live
there.

To me, the whole thing doesn't make any real sense other than a
retrosalute to the days of America's soaring dreams and big budget
surpluses of the 1960's, in much the same way that Iraq is our
retrosalute to Vietnam.

No, it doesn't seem comparable to the Apollo days to me. This isn't
about planting flags and leaving footprints. It's about staying for an
extended period of time, which necessarily involves developing
technology and infrastructure needed to, er, stay for an extended period
of time. The same technology and infrastructure, in fact, that is
needed for colonization. This is a very good thing, and is the obvious
next step after the flags-and-footprints stage. I'm only disappointed
that it took us 30 years to resume this progress.

Best,
- Joe

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In article .com,
"Jake McGuire" wrote:

There's some sort of self-coherent case to be made for Mars
exploration, even after you ignore all of Zubrin's frontier BS.
Finding evidence of prior life (or especially current life) there would
be quite significant, and I think that the amount of exploration needed
for that might well be into the "cheaper to do with people" range.

But the moon? I hesitate to say "who cares," but I'm thinking it.

Funny, that's what popped into my head as you went on about evidence of
life on Mars.

Evidence of life on Mars is interesting, in the same way that, say, a
potato shaped like Elvis is interesting. If there's a story about it in
one of my magazine articles, I'll probably read it. (Though I've long
since stopped reading the stories about yet-more evidence of past water
on Mars -- enough already!) But it's not going to help me get into
space, is it? If we discover a big asteroid or comet headed for Earth,
is knowledge of life on Mars going to equip us to divert it? If, 50
years from now, some madman develops a plague that can wipe out all
people on Earth, will having visited Mars do us any good?

Developing the ability to actually *live* off-planet is far more
important than just visiting another one, evidence of life or no.

I don't think anyone seriously suggests actually building spacecraft on
the moon, but sometimes they discuss extracting oxygen from the soil.
I've never seen anything to make me vaguely believe that this is
economically or technologically worthwhile in the service of any larger
end.

Well, perhaps the recently-announced Centennial Challenge will change
your mind about the technological and economic viability. (I'm not sure
how one defines "worthwhile" in this context.) As for being in the
service of a larger end -- seems pretty obvious to me.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
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| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

Joe Strout wrote:
But it's not going to help me get into space, is it?

And a moon base will, how?

If we discover a big asteroid or comet headed for Earth,
is knowledge of life on Mars going to equip us to divert it?

And a moon base will, how?

If, 50
years from now, some madman develops a plague that can wipe out all
people on Earth, will having visited Mars do us any good?

And a moon base will, how?

Developing the ability to actually *live* off-planet is far more
important than just visiting another one, evidence of life or no.

If we wanted to develop the ability to live off-planet, we'd be
spending money on regenerative life support, tether dynamics, medical
effects of reduced gravity, etc etc. Not sending four people to the
moon.

Well, perhaps the recently-announced Centennial Challenge will change
your mind about the technological and economic viability. (I'm not sure
how one defines "worthwhile" in this context.)

I was thinking of two criteria. First and most importantly: can you
bring the oxygen to the moon cheaper than you can produce it there?
Secondly - the oxygen is presumably going to be used in the service of
some other goal - is there a cheaper way of accomplishing said other
goal than lunar oxygen extraction, be it closed-cycle life support,
huge mass drivers, or big laser launch systems.

As for being in the service of a larger end -- seems pretty obvious to me.

I disagree. I think that the vast majority of arguments for lunar
exploration come from the "What neat things could I do to justify a
moon base" rather than "I want to do this neat thing - is a moon base
useful for it?" This leads one to argue for He-3 extraction and other
silliness.

-jake

Jake McGuire wrote:

There's some sort of self-coherent case to be made for Mars
exploration, even after you ignore all of Zubrin's frontier BS.



National Lampoon once stated that no one should wear a Greek fisherman's
cap unless they were
A. Greek.
B. A fisherman.
I threw mine away many years ago.

Finding evidence of prior life (or especially current life) there would
be quite significant, and I think that the amount of exploration needed
for that might well be into the "cheaper to do with people" range.



Exopaleontology might be one place where people could work better than
machines, based on a couple of decades of experience crawling around in
rocks looking for fossils. On the other hand, current life should be
fairly easy to find either by its presence or by examining its wind
borne detritus. What we really need to do is get a sample of Martian
soil and stick it under an electron microscope.

I don't think anyone seriously suggests actually building spacecraft on
the moon, but sometimes they discuss extracting oxygen from the soil.
I've never seen anything to make me vaguely believe that this is
economically or technologically worthwhile in the service of any larger
end.


I can't understand this either. For one thing, assuming you do build a
lunar base, your explorations are going to be limited to an area fairly
near the base for the sake of safety in case your rover breaks down and
they need to send a rescue rover to get you.
You'd actually get more surface analysis with a large number of unmanned
sample return probes sent across the whole surface of the Moon. But even
that sounds like a lot of money to spend considering what you're likely
to learn.

Pat

Scott Lowther ) wrote:
: Jake McGuire wrote:

:
: But the moon? I hesitate to say "who cares," but I'm thinking it.
:

: Lessee, who would care about the moon... hmmm...

: 1: Astronomers
: 2: Tourists
: 3: Anybody who wants to get fantastically rich in the beamed solar power
: industry
: 4: Anyone who feels they need helium-3 for fusion reactors
: 5: Anyone wanting to head into deep space and who needs lots of aluminum
: and/or oxygen
: 6: Anyone who wants to build big-ass space colonies
: 7: Anyone who wants to exploit, colonize or otherwise make use of
: astroids or outer-system moons and who needs to test out tech
: 8: The military
: 9: Anyone who wants to test really dangerous technology, from bionasties
: to nukes to antimatter drive systems

Number 8 might we why Juno was picked over Moonrise. IOW, have 8. assist
with your lunar missions.

Eric

Scott Lowther wrote:


1: Astronomers


Needs a base on the far side, you can only use it for 14 days maximum
each month, and there is the communication problem.
There is also sagging of the telescopes under gravity to contend with,
and lunar dust getting on it and its traverse mechanism.
A solar orbiting telescope facing permanently away from the Sun can work
24/7 all year long and doesn't have to worry about dust (other than
micrometeors, and those will hit a lunar one as well.) or gravity.

2: Tourists


It would be fun if the Earth moved in the sky; it doesn't.
The cost of the ticket will be rather high also; even Earth orbit looks
cheap once you figure out the total amount of energy required to get the
tourist there and back.

3: Anybody who wants to get fantastically rich in the beamed solar
power industry


And can talk the world in to shutting off their lights around the time
of the New Moon each month; in fact the power arrival is going to be
limited to around twelve hours fifty minutes per day to any point on
earth no matter what the phase of the Moon is.
assuming you are talking about using mass drivers to move lunar soil
into GEO to build solar arrays, the total cost of the lunar soil
factory and launch facility, plus the cost of manufacturing the arrays
in GEO would probably far exceed the cost of simply shooting everything
prefab from Earth straight to GEO.

4: Anyone who feels they need helium-3 for fusion reactors


When they get a fusion reactor powerplant running, and can show that
they can mine and bring helium-3 back from the Moon in a way that makes
it economical to use, that might be worth considering.

5: Anyone wanting to head into deep space and who needs lots of
aluminum and/or oxygen


We've got a fair amount of both right here on earth. We've even got
these cool high-tech biooxygen generators that only need water,
sunlight, and soil to work.

6: Anyone who wants to build big-ass space colonies


Let's just build a big-ass Antarctic or Australian Out-Back colony, or
one on the continental shelf; any one of these would be far cheaper to
do, and far easier to get to and from.


7: Anyone who wants to exploit, colonize or otherwise make use of
astroids or outer-system moons and who needs to test out tech


We could get a lot of iron from the asteroids; we could also get a lot
of iron from drilling a really deep hole in Tanganyika, and using a
nuclear device to burn a hole in the impenetrable layer that covers the
outer molten core of the Earth. Now mind you, there may be some risk
involved with this idea, unlike moving asteroids around the solar
system, which would be perfectly safe.

8: The military


Ah, yes....they don't know exactly what hey would do up on the Moon, but
I'm sure they could think of something to do up there if the put their
minds to it... maybe they could build a defense system against rogue
asteroids; I suspect there could be a lot of those around in the years
to come.


9: Anyone who wants to test really dangerous technology, from
bionasties to nukes to antimatter drive systems


So we're going to the Moon to develop biological warfare agents? You
can't fool me, you're working for the Bush White House, aren't you? :-D

Pat

Joe Strout wrote:

I never have figured out what exactly the proposed lunar base is
supposed to do-



It's supposed to be a first step. It will give us experience living on
other worlds. It will cause us to develop lunar ISRU technologies. It
will provide people on-hand to deploy and maintain scientific
instruments. It will spur the development of transportation
technologies which then, one would hope, would trickle into the private
sector. It will provide a ready source of oxygen, for refueling (er,
oxidizing?) spacecraft in cislunar space. It will provide a source of
metals and other elements for building large space stations, even
settlements, well beyond what would be practical if all the mass had to
be hauled up from Earth.



All that is so far beyond NASA's current or any future likely budget as
to be well-nigh impossible inside of fifty years.
This new space initiative was the one that proposed we do a manned flyby
of Mars instead of a landing, as that would bust the budget.

And ultimately all these developments will mean that *I* can visit the
Moon someday in my lifetime if I so choose (and if I work hard and save
my pennies, of course). Or anyone else, of course. Maybe even live
there.



You Will Go To The Moon! You will also win the Boston Marathon, and
stand on the summit of Mount Everest.
With incredible luck, a lot of practice, and a lot of money, you might
be able to get to the summit of Everest, but I wouldn't be getting my
hopes up about the Marathon, and I think you better count of life
extension for the Moon part. We've been flying in space for around
forty-five years now, and so far around 450 people have been into space
versus a world population of around 6,446,131,400 as of July of this
year. So in other words, the odds of anyone now living having flown in
space would be around 14,324,736 to 1.
You'd better hope they really up spaceflight numbers in the years to
come to better your odds. :-)


To me, the whole thing doesn't make any real sense other than a
retrosalute to the days of America's soaring dreams and big budget
surpluses of the 1960's, in much the same way that Iraq is our
retrosalute to Vietnam.



No, it doesn't seem comparable to the Apollo days to me. This isn't
about planting flags and leaving footprints. It's about staying for an
extended period of time, which necessarily involves developing
technology and infrastructure needed to, er, stay for an extended period
of time. The same technology and infrastructure, in fact, that is
needed for colonization. This is a very good thing, and is the obvious
next step after the flags-and-footprints stage. I'm only disappointed
that it took us 30 years to resume this progress.



You're talking about colonizing a lethally unpleasant place for no
better reason than to colonize further lethally unpleasant places. Try
Death Valley in midsummer, or Little America in Antarctic midwinter;
either one of them is a lot more hospitable than any other body in the
solar system, if for no other reason than you can breathe the
atmosphere; yet you note there isn't any great rush to build cities in
either location.
How many people really want to live amid "magnificent desolation"?
I'd rather like to live in a place that has The Garden Of Eden on one
side, and The Mall Of America on the other. :-)
If we get our population under control, and develop renewable sources of
energy, along with some terraforming of Earth itself, we can avoid
having to move to other planets for thousands, if not tens of thousands
of years.

Pat

Joe Strout wrote:


Evidence of life on Mars is interesting, in the same way that, say, a
potato shaped like Elvis is interesting. If there's a story about it in
one of my magazine articles, I'll probably read it. (Though I've long
since stopped reading the stories about yet-more evidence of past water
on Mars -- enough already!) But it's not going to help me get into
space, is it? If we discover a big asteroid or comet headed for Earth,
is knowledge of life on Mars going to equip us to divert it?


If you are up on the Moon and something like this happens, you are still
going to be SOL:
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/clark/chance/23oldcom.jpg

If, 50
years from now, some madman develops a plague that can wipe out all
people on Earth, will having visited Mars do us any good?



Who says he can't take it to the Moon? In fact, what if someone carrying
the plague shows up on the Moon from Earth?
Mars is a lot more safe as a refuge in each of these cases, as it is a
lot further away and takes a lot longer to get to.
It's also a hell of a lot more Earthlike than the Moon. Have you ever
considered what's going to happen to your Lunar colonists muscle tone
after living in 1/6th G for a year or two? They'll be quite happy to
live on the Moon, as they won't be able to stand upright on Earth anymore.
The first generation of their children will be exiles from Earth from
birth.

Pat