Moon Base Alpha Is Poorly Concieved

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 21:02:09 GMT, John Schutkeker
wrote:

You've solved the puzzle, gentlemen. I hereby propose that, in this
newsgroup, we formally christen Bush's plan with the name "Moon Base
Alpha." It's the name of the base in that excellent old sci-fi tv show
(and some good paperback adaptations too, I might add) and being America's
first moon base, it is properly named "Alpha."

Does anybody wish to second the motion?

I have been thinking about it and consider the name just too boring,
where it is also just so 1970s.

On the Moon I believe that they should name it after the location,
like with having Tranquility Base. So does anyone know what this area
where the ice could be is called?

I have always like Earth View hotel, expect that it won't really be an
hotel.

Cardman
http://www.cardman.com
http://www.cardman.co.uk

On Sun, 25 Jan 2004 08:28:48 +0000, Cardman
wrote:

Ah well, most sci-fi shows tend to break one Universal law or another,
but that is not too important, when their job is to incite the
imagination of things that may be possible.

....Some of the things the various writers of the show have expressed
over the years have been the desire to fix some things that make
people today go "D'oh!". The ones that come to mind right off the bat
a

* The whole Moon out of orbit with the source of the thrust being on
the "dark" side has a major flaw that everyone's noticed from the
start. If it were done over again, the blast would have opened a space
warp that sucked the Moon into it, and the Moon is simply following
some sort of "wormhole network" that periodicaly dumps it into normal
space just long enough to get the Alphans in trouble.

* The Eagle command module would not have those two window holes at
the bottom, and the landing pods would be a bit more streamlined. In
addition, there'd have been more variance in the "lego qualities" of
the Eagles. What's the use of having a modular ship if you couldn't
really do wild things with the modules? Think cargo trains here, kids.

* It would be made very clear that the Eagles can provide continuous
thrust longer than we're currently used to. Ergo, it really does only
take a few hours to go from lunar orbit to Earth because there isn't a
coast mode per se.

* Black Sun would become Black Hole. Duh.

* The Alphans would start collecting these alien derelicts they keep
coming across, and the tech they discover would get adapted to their
use. Duh^3.


OM

--

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his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

"Cardman" wrote in message ...

On the Moon I believe that they should name it after the location,
like with having Tranquility Base. So does anyone know what this area
where the ice could be is called?

I have always like Earth View hotel, expect that it won't really be an
hotel.


I'm against building a hotel near the Lunar south pole, BTW. Visitors
would be just too confused about the Earth they see just over the ho-
rizon being upside down...

"That can't be Australia! I've seen Australia on a map, and that's
not where Australia is! I want my money back!"



--
__ "A good leader knows when it's best to ignore the __
('__` screams for help and focus on the bigger picture." '__`)
//6(6; ©OOL mmiv :^)^\\
`\_-/ http://home.t-online.de/home/ulrich....lmann/redbaron \-_/'

Ool wrote:

"Bryan J. Maloney" wrote in message 93.32...

"Ool" nattered on
:


snip
Giving people an idea of what would be possible if only we started
now is what I'm missing. Who's ever even heard of space elevators?
of NEO asteroids as a resource of minerals and volatiles? Of the Moon
as a way station towards other destinations, with refueling capacities
and space telescopes on the surface, whose inhabitants would likely
live underground if anywhere?

I read about it, but I don't see such things on the sci-fi channel!



Dude, you can't even get sci-fi on the sci-fi channel half the time..

"TKalbfus" wrote in message
...
It doesn't fit in with NASA's new paradigm of better, smaller, faster.
That's the single most important thing that Bush has thrown away with
this
new direction. We've gotta get the Kuiper Express back. That was
visionary.


ESA is already king of the small.

NASA shouldn't do small, it is meant to do BIG. Let ESA and small SMEs do
Pluto missions and sending probes to count the number of Saturn's rings or
measuring the frequency of volcanic eruptions on Io etc...

I'm not saying the better, smaller, faster was a bad thing, but I don't want
my great, great grandchildren to be sitting here on Earth in 2140, hearing
on the news how good ol' NASA has finally managed to send the smallest and
cheapest possible probe to an asteroid to calculate its rate of chemical
dissociation

This young generation of explorers are going back to the Moon to stay and
onto Mars - its that simple!!

"Ool" wrote in message ...




Would there be no way of fascinating people about the real challenges
and trials of space colonization, rather than fairy tales with space-
ships in it?

Only if you can do so while still telling the fairy-tale. Almost
_all_ popular fiction, in _all_ genres, not just SF, are ultimately
retellings of the same few basic stories. They can be recognized in
SF, Westerns, crime fiction, romantic novels, fairy tales, mythology,
etc. They show up in print, TV, audio/verbal storytelling, movies,
etc. The details vary. The basic stories repeat over and over in new
forms.


Would a show with a moonbase from the far future in a semi-realistic
setting--as a hub and gateway between Earth and the rest of the solar
system--be so inconceivable? Is there no market whatsoever for "hard"
science fiction, where you might be able to point to the odd scientif-
ic inaccuracy, rather than going into groan-mode right from the start?

The problem is that people want the familiar stories. It probably is
not impossible to tell the familiar stories in a hard-SF background
which would appeal to a mass audience, but it's going to take a
terrifically skilled author, since he/she is going to have to explain
_what_ is going on to a non-technical audience, while still somehow
telling a version of one of the familiar stories.

A few stories get written that don't fit the familiar patterns, but
they rarely if ever have more than niche appeal.

Shermanlee

John Schutkeker wrote:
(TKalbfus) wrote in news:20040124091106.17086.00000651@mb-
m03.aol.com:

ESA is already king of the small.

And next time they won't be so dumb as to leave out something as important
as landing sequence telemetry. We're going to have to make every stupid
mistake in the book before we start getting these things right.

ESA did *NOT* leave it out. Because *ESA* was not making the Beagle 2
decisions and designs at all.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

"Ool" wrote in message ...


Solar space stations are usually conceived by mad scientists, who use
it to focus destructive forces on Earth, just as an example. Or care-
lessness makes the Moon leave orbit or disintegrate. This way science
fiction, which could motivate us to explore new frontiers, inadverted-
ly turns into an endless series of cautionary tales instead...

Which may be a default nature of fiction. For a non-space example,
even Isaac Asimov ended up doing what he specifically set out not to
do, in his robot stories. At the start, he specifically decided he
was _not_ writing cautionary tales about hubris or Frankenstein
monsters, thus the First Law of Robotics. The 'robot rebels and
destroys his creator' plotline was verbotten.

But, years later, his later robot stories ended up being about the
deleterious effect of the presence of robots on humans and human
societies. They weren't Frankensteins (with the possible exception of
Daneel Olivaw, depending on your POV), but the story-line ended up
concluding that humans were better off without them. It turned into a
sort of cautionary tale.

I use that as the most familiar science fiction example I can think
of, off-hand.



The only thing that would sell in reality as well as it sells in fic-
tion is the discovery of E.T. life, so this is what most SF focuses
on--even hard stuff like "2001." Which is sad, because taking life on
Earth out into space, where it could bloom beyond our wildest imagina-
tion if only we managed to adapt it to the conditions out there, is
what I feel *should* fascinate people. But alas, it doesn't. That's
why there's no money in this concept, it seems, and why we're so hope-
lessly stuck...

The more truly alien a fictional alien is, the less the popular
audience is going to find it interesting, except as a _threat_. ET
was popular because he was very human. Ditto Spock.

Shermanlee

spaceprojects.tk wrote in
:

It was only after they realized that they had room
for a small lander did Pillinger sell them this bill of goods.
I bet they think twice
before being conned by a snake oil salesman like Pillinger again.

What are Pillinger's first name and company name?

"Dre" wrote in
:

I'm not saying the better, smaller, faster was a bad thing, but I
don't want my great, great grandchildren to be sitting here on Earth
in 2140, hearing on the news how good ol' NASA has finally managed to
send the smallest and cheapest possible probe to an asteroid to
calculate its rate of chemical dissociation

This young generation of explorers are going back to the Moon to stay
and onto Mars - its that simple!!

See, the problem is not getting into space, which is straightforward. The
problem is overcoming human fault, which is mind-bogglingly difficult.
Cassini took forever to get built and get off the ground, and the whole
time it was in incredible danger of having costs runaway to the point where
Congress would can it, like the SSC. They probably did have to trim it a
few times to keep costs under control. And just look at what happened with
the ISS.

I guess it's too much to ask that Americans find a way to permanently
prevent huge government projects from becoming bureaucratically hidebound,
because that's a problem as old as the Babylonians, but it's not
unreasonable to expect Americans to try their best to make it happen
anyhow, even if they're doomed to failure. It's better to try and fail
than never to try at all.

NASA has got to avoid white elephants at all costs, and smaller, cheaper,
faster is the way to do it. That man deserves a medal for inventing this
mantra, and now Bush has taken a poop on it. You mark my words, costs will
run away on Moon Base Alpha, and it will either get the axe or become a
heroin addicted monkey on NASA's back. In fact, I can feel the drugs
taking effect already. I want Kuiper and Webb back, and if they axe JIMO,
I'm going to Washington with a carload of RPG's. Joking.