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#11
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dasun wrote: Well yes I am excited! After 3 decades of inaction and NASA busy work it finally gets the show on the road - providing the politicians do not get stuck into it. Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have hoped for. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. As someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not close it. AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? At least it is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to deliver on their promises. Hey I am excited that there is *a* plan for going back to the Moon... and we've just heard it from the horse's mouth!!! That there is still a *will* and some thoughts around the *means* for humans going back to the Moon within my lifetime is, in itself, the most marvellous and most satifying thing I've heard in the past few years... AA ------------------------------=AD=AD---------------------------------- http://www.publishedauthors.net/aa_spaceagent/ "The ultimate dream adventure awaiting humanity..." ------------------------------=AD=AD---------------------------------- |
#12
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In article .com,
"dasun" wrote: Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have hoped for. Since it's what we actually got, this statement is true by tautology, but that's hardly comforting. I actually hoped for much better. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. I think it gives the wrong kind of experience base for any grander journeys. As someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not close it. Actually, the lack of any focus on Mars is the one good thing about the plan; to attempt to put flags and footprints on Mars would have been an even more colossal waste. AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? Because it is far too expensive. It makes any real progress with it untenable. Yet, supported by taxes, it competes with commercial providers who could do the same work for much lower real costs, and at the same time open up space for the rest of us. At least it is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to deliver on their promises. I find your lack of faith... disturbing. ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: | | http://www.macwebdir.com | `------------------------------------------------------------------' |
#13
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dasun wrote:
Well yes I am excited! After 3 decades of inaction and NASA busy work it finally gets the show on the road - providing the politicians do not get stuck into it. Given financial & political realities this is the best we could have hoped for. See it for what it is - a starting point that gives an industrial and experience base for grander journeys in the future. As someone who just remembers Armstrong taking his first step I would love to have seen a more definitive Mars direction but I am just glad that a window beyond LEO has finally opened let us hope the politicians do not close it. AS for the stick and using shuttle hardware, well why not? At least it is a known and I have little faith in brand new systems and even smaller faith in the nascent commercial space industry being able to deliver on their promises. So nothing happened in the space exploration area after moon landing? Apparently, Pioner/Voyager and other space probes, Hubble don't count to technological and science progress. It is Startrek future vision that matters, right? It looks like humans have less and less role in space exploration, pretty obvious, isn't it? Let's be reasonable and adjust the goals to conform the reality. |
#14
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"Rand Simberg" wrote in message ... On 19 Sep 2005 15:08:09 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Ed Kyle" made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that: OK, is anyone other than NASA fanboys here actually excited about this plan? The weak link in this plan is the missing data in between the landing and the blast off. 'Four astronauts then would fly to the moon and descend to the surface in the lander for a one-week stay, leaving the CEV alone in orbit. ...............[What are they going to do on the Moon?]....... After completing their initial four-to-seven-day mission, the astronauts would blast off, rendezvous with the CEV and return to a parachute landing in the western United States." I find that at best incompetent, and at worst suspicious. Do they have some unspoken/military reason for doing this??? When a govt agency asks the taxpayers to shell out a hundred billion, the first and obvious question is ....why. Nasa can't answer that question so the response should be NO. And with the next administration facing huge deficits this plan seems dead-on-arrival to me. I think it provides a good roadmap for NASA to follow for the next how-ever-many years. It is a great improvement to the space shuttle era NASA framework. This is a plan that could very well, over time, lead to a smaller, more focused NASA. More focused, certainly, but with the increasing budget, and the predilection to do more in house and less contracting, how is it smaller? It is a plan that produces something useful in the near-term - the CEV and CLV tools that will replace shuttle and could by themselves, in concert with commercial launch services and international space station partners, serve as the framework for a long- term human space program. For exactly the same (or more) cost as the Shuttle program. http://www.transterrestrial.com/arch...29.html#005729 |
#15
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Hope all you like but the brutal reality is that space does not rate
much with most politicians and resonates little with the public - unless they see amazing things. In the real world the budget environment is very tight thus limiting what can be done, you want Moon Bases, you want Mars now pony up the cash. If we wait for that sort of money to materialise from reluctant politicians then manned exploration beyond LEO is not going to happen. Take what Griffin is offering, I seriously doubt much better could be proposed given NASA's current and future budgets. How in the hell is the experience base of operating in deep space on another word the wrong kind of experience? After 30 years of LEO practice and technology development is most certainly needed before we venture much further. Shuttle hardware is expensive, so is building whole new systems from scratch but - I bet - even more so. Use what you know, build only what you have to that would be my credo. Shuttle hardware provides well-known systems, as the basis of heavy lift and crew transport and that has to put the aerospace engineers ahead of the game. Think of the entire support infrastructure - VAB, crawlers, pads - and it already exists and just needs modifying. Think of the flight hardware and it is the same modifying game. As for commercial exploration beyond LEO, give me a reasonable business plan that justifies that sort of expenditure, some things belong in the realm of government - for a time at least. When I see commercial heavy lift, and I mean 100+ tons, making a profit then I will believe! In fact when I see a commercial orbital manned system actually working then I will be much less sceptical of their claims. Space is hard and expensive. Finally, give some credit to Bush for enabling this point to be reached and now the crossing of the Cassandra can now begin.... |
#16
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When you think of it, after Saturn V, N-1, and Energia, this will be
the fourth giant launcher of humankind... |
#17
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Maybe we could do a commercial Skylab ?
Since the launcher exists, why not a single module, 100-ton class commercial station.. ? No costly assembly and with a 100 mass maybe you can keep the consumable servicing to a minimum. Maybe build with ample design margins and simple construction techniques. Well : question, with the 125-t class launcher, assuming the Govt builds two a year for its Moon missions, what else could be done ? |
#18
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You love robots and I marvel at what unmanned craft have done for solar
system reconnaissance BUT I studied computer science and geology and I am very aware of robotic limitations. Robots are great for first looks, but rate a very poor second to actually having trained observers on the spot. Take the wonderful mars rovers that have spent near 2 years on the surface but have covered much less ground than Gene and Jack did in 3 days on Apollo 17. In field geology human observation and intuition play a critical role, Jack saw some interesting orange soil and decided to sample, and robots currently - and for a considerable time to come will - lack the ability to function just this way. Doing science by remote control is difficult and has some very real limitations. |
#19
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Science and lots of it, skip the political baloney and stick to the
subject! |
#20
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If you studied compute science, then you must be pretty much aware of
the Moore's law. And you are certainly aware of predictions that computer would never play chess well enough. Which means that any speculation about robot's future limited abilities is groundless. I see nothing special about your yellow soil example. With digital cams ever increasing abilities, in 10 years you will have a remote picture that is indistingusheable from what human is able to see on the spot. Some obscure geologist sitting in the comfort of his desktop and watching the transmission over the internet would notice something interesting. Then you can fund a new mission *for a fraction of manned mission cost*. Even more likely, the amount of transmitted data in 10 years from now would be so huge, that you have to employ a very sophisticated data mining technique, in order to extract some useful information. No way a trained Joe Doe geologist could be able to do that on the spot. Yes, unglorified astronouts are just expensive technicians. |
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