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

"Reinert Korsnes" wrote in message
...
LawsonE wrote:


"Kaido Kert" wrote in message
...

[...]
The third choice, using this money to stimulate growth of new
commercial
space industries, will apparently never be presented.

As I've been saying, moon bases, mars missions, etc. are all long-term,
and the only sensible way to go is to establish a greater presence in
*orbit* with the ability to research, manufacture and support commercial
and exploration-oriented projects, be it moon-missions, or micro-gravity
factories.

Just saying "let's build a base on the moon" assumes that we have a
reason
to do that specific task. Saying "let's build a REAL space station"
allows

Any production/experiments that could be made on the Moon and which could
be too dangerous to make on the Earth ?

Key words: radiation, chemical pollutants, bacterias/virus,
risk for terrorism, secrets, long term storing/archiving of
genetic materials, regular crimes, long term (200 years ?) experiments,...

Better to make and use monster bugs on the Moon than on the Earth ?

reinert



us to decide what to do later on, knowing that whatever we decide, we've
got the infrastructure in place for a practical attempt at whatever.


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.

It also has to be considered, that people were apparently presented with
false choices. First its not like taking an entire space budget and
allocating for education and healthcare will make significant difference,
its a drop in a bucket.
The choices on the table are actually continuing to circle the earth in
20-year old space trucks that are gradually falling appart and simply
continuing to shovel the space budget to aerospace contractors for ant
experiments, or actually going somewhere and achieving something with this
money.
The third choice, using this money to stimulate growth of new commercial
space industries, will apparently never be presented.

-kert

What did you have in mind, a big bin of money labeled "Space Exploration
Stimulant! Come and get it." Some Corporate Executive will ask, "What do we
have to do to get this money?" The Reply is, "Do something spacey!" So a
company is founded called Pan World Spaceways, and they build a small 8
passenger space plane mounted on a rocket and sell tickets to corporate fat
cats and the rich and famous blast off into orbit for a holiday vacation while
the rest of the public wonders what happened to their space program. The reply
is, "Turn to channel 5, there you can see Paris Hilton floating around in the
space cabin having the time of her life, taking in the sights of Earth below.
Oh look there, here's Britiney Spears on a honeymoon with her lastest husband.
Don't worry all you guys out there, she promises that this marriage, like all
the others will be only temporary, so she'll be available again."
So there's you space program, a chance to get a look at the lives of the rich
and famous enjoying themselves in orbit at public expense. The government
subsudizes the operation to reduce investor risk, while the investors reap a
big profit from all the rich travellers they send into space. Meanwhile the
Moon and Mars go unvisited.

Tom

As I've been saying, moon bases, mars missions, etc. are all long-term, and
the only sensible way to go is to establish a greater presence in *orbit*
with the ability to research, manufacture and support commercial and
exploration-oriented projects, be it moon-missions, or micro-gravity
factories.

The Moon is in orbit, why not go there?

Just saying "let's build a base on the moon" assumes that we have a reason
to do that specific task.

Yes we do, so as to establish a presence on the Moon and to claim the Moon as
our own.

Saying "let's build a REAL space station" allows
us to decide what to do later on, knowing that whatever we decide, we've got
the infrastructure in place for a practical attempt at whatever.

So you want to just establish living quarters for astronauts in orbit so they
can ejoy themselves doing back flips, somersaults, and playing with
waterdroplets in a weightless environment while we decide, what it is
specifically we want them to do? Perhaps you can have them press a button to
mix two chemical compounds in orbit and see what chrystaline structure
develops.

Tom

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

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

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?

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. Going to Mars first and
building space stations afterwards not only suggests putting carts in
front of horses, it also suggests the use of band-aid solutions during
at least the initial few voyages to Mars.

Indeed, using those first explorers as guinea-pigs for the later ones.
Which may provide another explanation for why the first trip would not
be landing on Mars.

--
Stephen Souter

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

Stephen Souter wrote:

In article ,
(TKalbfus) wrote:

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?

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. 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?

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:00:52 GMT, Robert Ehrlich
wrote:

A moonbase has , since the mid '70s been a desire of the NASA
engineers. I was one of a group whose job was to justify the moon
base. We could find no scientific justification. Then the NASA raised
the theme of new material constructed from lunar soil/rock with which to
build the station and spinoffs for the construction industry. Then
obtaining oxygen and maybe water from smelting lunar rock. None of
these made any economic sense from a long or mid term economic
standpoint just like the promise of new materials and drugs from the
shuttle / space station complex has not paid off.
Now they have found another crusade for the lunar base--an intermediary
spaceport for the Mars mission. So we laboriously pull ourselves out of
one gravity well and then jump into another.

The only possible use for a lunar base would be as a military platform
for ballistic missiles aimed at the earth. This is the one application
that does not have to be justified economically.

Wow a whole 3 days for the warhead to reach it's target and being
tracked all the way.

No question such a base would bail out the big aerospace companies.

The most valuable return on space exploration is knowledge--some or most
of it will become important only over long time spans.Right now compare
the manned program with the results of small and large unmanned
craft--Hubble Telescope among them.
Knowledge for what? How is this 'knowledge' going to affect the tax
payer who paid for it? Is it going to make them better people, and
give them a better standard of living?

On 13 Jan 2004 15:27:26 GMT, (TKalbfus) wrote:

It also has to be considered, that people were apparently presented with
false choices. First its not like taking an entire space budget and
allocating for education and healthcare will make significant difference,
its a drop in a bucket.
The choices on the table are actually continuing to circle the earth in
20-year old space trucks that are gradually falling appart and simply
continuing to shovel the space budget to aerospace contractors for ant
experiments, or actually going somewhere and achieving something with this
money.
The third choice, using this money to stimulate growth of new commercial
space industries, will apparently never be presented.

-kert

What did you have in mind, a big bin of money labeled "Space Exploration
Stimulant! Come and get it." Some Corporate Executive will ask, "What do we
have to do to get this money?" The Reply is, "Do something spacey!" So a
company is founded called Pan World Spaceways, and they build a small 8
passenger space plane mounted on a rocket and sell tickets to corporate fat
cats and the rich and famous blast off into orbit for a holiday vacation while
the rest of the public wonders what happened to their space program. The reply
is, "Turn to channel 5, there you can see Paris Hilton floating around in the
space cabin having the time of her life, taking in the sights of Earth below.
Oh look there, here's Britiney Spears on a honeymoon with her lastest husband.
Don't worry all you guys out there, she promises that this marriage, like all
the others will be only temporary, so she'll be available again."
So there's you space program, a chance to get a look at the lives of the rich
and famous enjoying themselves in orbit at public expense. The government
subsudizes the operation to reduce investor risk, while the investors reap a
big profit from all the rich travellers they send into space. Meanwhile the
Moon and Mars go unvisited.

Ah, hem, the 'rich and famous' have always been the first to use new
transportation technology.

John Ordover wrote:
: Yes we do, so as to establish a presence on the Moon and to claim the Moon as
: our own.

: To stave off the competing claims from the Martians, the Venusians,
: and those mean nasty creatures from Alpha Centauri?

You keep forgetting the Romulans. I tell you there was another
Terran/Romulan war after "Balance of Terror" and before TNG, but you
simply refuse to listen ;^)




--- Gregg
"Improvise, adapt, overcome."

Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: (617) 496-1558

Right now space is the arena for the next step in understanding nuclear
physics. Planet-based experiments are dimensionally too small and are
too low energetically. The longshot is that a knowledge of the
fundamental fabric of space/time coupled with observation of phenomena
reflecting enormous mass/ energies might be useful.

OTOH I think that there may be bigger payoffs exploring our worlds oceans.

Christopher wrote:

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004 02:00:52 GMT, Robert Ehrlich
wrote:



A moonbase has , since the mid '70s been a desire of the NASA
engineers. I was one of a group whose job was to justify the moon
base. We could find no scientific justification. Then the NASA raised
the theme of new material constructed from lunar soil/rock with which to
build the station and spinoffs for the construction industry. Then
obtaining oxygen and maybe water from smelting lunar rock. None of
these made any economic sense from a long or mid term economic
standpoint just like the promise of new materials and drugs from the
shuttle / space station complex has not paid off.
Now they have found another crusade for the lunar base--an intermediary
spaceport for the Mars mission. So we laboriously pull ourselves out of
one gravity well and then jump into another.

The only possible use for a lunar base would be as a military platform
for ballistic missiles aimed at the earth. This is the one application
that does not have to be justified economically.



Wow a whole 3 days for the warhead to reach it's target and being
tracked all the way.



No question such a base would bail out the big aerospace companies.

The most valuable return on space exploration is knowledge--some or most
of it will become important only over long time spans.Right now compare
the manned program with the results of small and large unmanned
craft--Hubble Telescope among them.


Knowledge for what? How is this 'knowledge' going to affect the tax
payer who paid for it? Is it going to make them better people, and
give them a better standard of living?