Bush's space plan: most people don't care

Every acre of the Moon has been explored by probe and telescope.
There is nothing there to catch anyone's imagination. Check the
reaction to the current Mars photos, which look just like the Viking
photos and the Pathinder photos. The Moon and Mars are -dull-.
Paying billions so humans can bounce around on airless, waterless
desert is pointless.

There is one mission that might get the public interest back...
Europa.


If they can send an unmanned probe there that can find some sort of
liquid water Ocean underneath the ice then a manned mission becomes
desirable.

A water zone means a space colony would not have to constantly ship
water and likely with some means of energy generating and UV bulbs could
grow its own food. Water means as long as you have energy you have air.

In article ,
"Bill Bonde ( the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack )"
wrote:

Stephen Souter wrote:

One of the reasons for building a space station first and going to
places like Mars afterwards would be to research the long-term effects
of weightlessness and try to find solutions.

When you are on Mars, you aren't weightless.

You have to get to Mars first, and that will probably take at least six
months. Then having got to Mars the astronauts have to be in a good
enough physical condition to do useful things, probably more or less
right away.

We know that being
weightless for long periods isn't a plus. We do not know what being in a
lower than one gee environment for long periods means. The Moon is the
perfect test bed for looking into this. It requires no special anything.
Just build your moonbase and do other things and you find out the answer
to this important question for free. You like free, don't you?

Being under one-sixth G for six months is probably not the same as being
weightless for six months.

Nothing worthwhile in this life is free. You get what you pay for, as
NASA learnt to its cost when it found that cutting too many corners led
to the crashing of MCO & MPL. To its credit, it seems to have learnt
from its experience, as Mars Odyssey & the MERs attest.

Which is doubtless why Bush & his advisers seem to have decided to stay
on and use the ISS for precisely that kind of research.

--
Stephen Souter

http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/

"Stephen Souter" wrote:

In article ,
"Bill Bonde ( the oblique allusion in lieu of the frontal attack )"
wrote:

Stephen Souter wrote:

One of the reasons for building a space station first and going to
places like Mars afterwards would be to research the long-term effects
of weightlessness and try to find solutions.

When you are on Mars, you aren't weightless.

You have to get to Mars first, and that will probably take at least six
months. Then having got to Mars the astronauts have to be in a good
enough physical condition to do useful things, probably more or less
right away.

We know that being
weightless for long periods isn't a plus. We do not know what being in a
lower than one gee environment for long periods means. The Moon is the
perfect test bed for looking into this. It requires no special anything.
Just build your moonbase and do other things and you find out the answer
to this important question for free. You like free, don't you?

Being under one-sixth G for six months is probably not the same as being
weightless for six months.

Nothing worthwhile in this life is free. You get what you pay for, as
NASA learnt to its cost when it found that cutting too many corners led
to the crashing of MCO & MPL. To its credit, it seems to have learnt
from its experience, as Mars Odyssey & the MERs attest.

Which is doubtless why Bush & his advisers seem to have decided to stay
on and use the ISS for precisely that kind of research.

Exactly. The plan revealed today by Bush was obviously given a lot of
thought. I think it's a good plan, a sensible plan. It's way better than
*no* plan, which is what NASA has been given for decades. I hope the
leadership shown today does not fade, with presidential apathy returning.

Jon

"John Ordover" wrote in message
om...
(TKalbfus) wrote in message
...
All of the above might be a reason to go to the Moon and set up a base,
but
even so, without seeing any analysis to the contrary, my intuition says
it
would be cheaper in the long run to establish as robust an orbital
presence
as possible before concentrating on a lunar or mars mission. Planning
things
to work with such a mission would be fine, but concentrating on one at
the
expense of a more flexible orbital station seems short-sighted and
counterproductive to me.

The better your space station, the easier it will be to do everything
else.

If you want to explore space, don't you think it would be obvious to
explore
the things in space like the Moon and Mars? I really don't understand
people
like you. You want the public to pay you so you can bore them to death
with
irrelivant experiments in orbit and scientific gobbledigook that the
average
taxpayer can't understand. However a simple concept of exploring another
planet
is easy to understand. Now which, do you think, will have an easier time
convincing the public to pay for?

Tom

Every acre of the Moon has been explored by probe and telescope.

You really don't know what you're talking about it, do you. Many areas of
the Moon have not been explored at all and many have barely been touched.

There is nothing there to catch anyone's imagination.

There's a lot there. The possibility of water for one.


Check the
reaction to the current Mars photos, which look just like the Viking
photos and the Pathinder photos. The Moon and Mars are -dull-.
Paying billions so humans can bounce around on airless, waterless
desert is pointless.

"jetgraphics" wrote in message
...
Art wrote:

[Space research]
Gave us Composite Structural Materials, Velcro and the Micro Chip

Not true.
[1] Velcro was not from NASA nor space research;
[2] Nor Composite Structural materials;
[3] Nor bipolar transistors;
[4] Nor Field Effect Transistors (FET).

[1] In the early 1940's, Swiss inventor George de Mestral went on a walk
with his dog, finding the "ah hah" connection between tiny hooks on
cockleburrs and the loops of his clothing... and that was a bit before
NASA's time.
[2] Composites are a broad category, but if you mean carbon fiber
composites, it wasn't just NASA. The idea of composite building materials,
made from a polymer, or plastic, mixed with carbon or glass fibers, as a
replacement for steel goes back nearly three decades. Other fiber
reinforcements, like ferrocement, go back over 100 years. Fiber reinforced
mortar was used in the Great Wall, in China.
[3] Bipolar transistors were (re)discovered in 1947, before NASA.
[4] Julius Lilienfeld,who in 1925 and 1926 filed a patent that issued in
1930 as patent 1,745,175 for a FET transistor. In 1932 Lilienfeld was
issued patent 1,877,140 for what would be known now as NPPN and PNNP
transistors for amplifying electric currents. In 1933, he was awarded
patent 1,900,018 for an NPN transistor, and a reversed biased P-N junction
used as a variable capacitor.


You're doing good so far.


Anecdote:
A Russian, commenting on the difference between the two space programs,
summed it all up with the example of NASA spending millions of tax dollars
to make a pressurized ink pen to write in Zero G, and the Soviets using a
mechanical pencil to do the same job.

As you say, this is just an anecdote. It's not true.

http://www.spacepen.com/usa/index2.htm


Though I do advocate the exploitation of space, I do not think a
government
controlled and funded agency, with public wallets to mine, can overcome
political obstacles to open up "space" to private enterprise.

In article ,
"Jon Berndt" wrote:

Exactly. The plan revealed today by Bush was obviously given a lot of
thought. I think it's a good plan, a sensible plan. It's way better than
*no* plan, which is what NASA has been given for decades. I hope the
leadership shown today does not fade, with presidential apathy returning.

One encouraging tidbit I've learned recently is that, apparently,
O'Keefe was instrumental in developing this plan. That is a very good
sign, since NASA administrators serve much longer terms than presidents.
If O'Keefe is truly behind this plan, and believes in it, then he has a
good chance of keeping it alive and moving forward even with an
apathetic boss.

,------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Joseph J. Strout Check out the Mac Web Directory: |
| http://www.macwebdir.com |
`------------------------------------------------------------------'

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

No, Art. Your claims are a classic example of the 'post hoc' fallacy.
In fact, your claims are just false. The space program did not bring
velcro into our lives, or composites, or microchips.

Paul

For those interested, here are some links that purport to show how spinoffs
that had their roots at NASA have helped industry:

http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/spinoff.html
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_busi...529724,00.html
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinselect.html
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

Jon

"Jon Berndt" wrote in message ...
"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

No, Art. Your claims are a classic example of the 'post hoc' fallacy.
In fact, your claims are just false. The space program did not bring
velcro into our lives, or composites, or microchips.

Paul

For those interested, here are some links that purport to show how spinoffs
that had their roots at NASA have helped industry:

http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/spinoff.html
http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/local_busi...529724,00.html
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinselect.html
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html

Oh, don't bother, Jon. I made a generalization in order to illustrate
"spending money on space, rather than right here at home" turns out to
be immeasurably profitable to ALL of us "right here at home."

Paul seems to be under the impression that the Race for the Moon
wasn't a factor (though certainly not the only one, as I'm more than
willing to concede) in bringing the three things I listed into
mainstream industry and, therefore, our everyday lives. Perhaps he's
correct, though I'll let NASA toot her own horn, and he can carry on
the debate with it.

Not the main thrust of the post in question, at any rate. The main
thrust was that the primary reason for the US to return to the Moon,
at this juncture, is the same as it was 40 years ago. And it can be
assumed with a high degree of certainty that it will follow
approximately the same course. This will entail unforeseen benefits,
but when the military need to establish a presence on the Moon
disappears (as in the economic or political collapse of the PRC, or
the premature end to its' own space program), so will US committal to
a presence on the Moon.

---
Art

On Thu, 15 Jan 2004 09:01:35 -0600, in a place far, far away, Joe
Strout made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

In article ,
"Jon Berndt" wrote:

Exactly. The plan revealed today by Bush was obviously given a lot of
thought. I think it's a good plan, a sensible plan. It's way better than
*no* plan, which is what NASA has been given for decades. I hope the
leadership shown today does not fade, with presidential apathy returning.

One encouraging tidbit I've learned recently is that, apparently,
O'Keefe was instrumental in developing this plan. That is a very good
sign, since NASA administrators serve much longer terms than presidents.

Not true, in general. Goldin was an exception. If a Republican
succeeds Bush, then O'Keefe may stay, but if a Dem is elected this
fall, he'll be toast. Even if Bush stays, rumor has it that O'Keefe
is in line to replace Rumsfeld.

Not true, in general. Goldin was an exception. If a Republican
succeeds Bush, then O'Keefe may stay, but if a Dem is elected this
fall, he'll be toast. Even if Bush stays, rumor has it that O'Keefe
is in line to replace Rumsfeld.


It would be very easy for Kerry to stake out a more pro-Mars position than
Bush. He could propose to fulfill a Mars direct mission by then end of his
hypothetical 8-year administration, and repeal George Bush's tax cuts on the
rich to finance it. By doubling NASA's budget, its possible to accomplish this
in 8 years, assuming he starts immediately. I wonder if any of the Democrats
have thought of this? Instead all I hear from them is criticism of George
Bush's space proposal. I'll bet Kerry would standout much more if he followed
this advice, and he could make comparisons to JFK as well, he certainly tries
to talk like him. I'm tired of the Dems being just the Anti-Bush party, they
should have some bold initiatives of their own.

Tom