Reuters: Moon program to cost $100 Billion (?!!?)

I'm trying to figure out whether the reporter is just badly math-unaware,
or did I miss something in Griffin's presentation. He said that NASA's
budget will be unaffected (flat, plus inflation) to develop the new
launcher. This story seems to have multiplied the total NASA budget by the
number of years to flight to come up with a ginormously ridiculous figure
guaranteed to deliver the project stillborn.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/0...eut/index.html

--
I was punching a text message into my | Reed Snellenberger
phone yesterday and thought, "they need | GPG KeyID: 5A978843
to make a phone that you can just talk | rsnellenberger
into." Major Thomb | -at-houston.rr.com

In article ,
Reed Snellenberger wrote:

I'm trying to figure out whether the reporter is just badly math-unaware,
or did I miss something in Griffin's presentation. He said that NASA's
budget will be unaffected (flat, plus inflation) to develop the new
launcher. This story seems to have multiplied the total NASA budget by the
number of years to flight to come up with a ginormously ridiculous figure
guaranteed to deliver the project stillborn.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/0...eut/index.html

The local NBC affiliate just did a few-second blurb, showing an
animation of something that looked vaguely like Daedelus heading
Moonward, and mentioning something about $140 Billion. It was so brief
that it was gone before I started paying attention (and it was live TV,
so I couldn't rewind it). I have no idea where that number came from
either.

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 00:34:44 GMT, Alan Anderson
wrote:

.... I have no idea where that number came from
either.


In any event, the $100 billion would be over 15 years, not right now.



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Reed Snellenberger,
Try thinking inflation and thus hundreds of billions and, that's not
even including the afterbirth of what each mission is going to further
contribute towards pollution and, as such damage even more of our
failing albedo by way of taking it directly into the nearest global
warming space-toilet. At least robotics wouldn't impact our environment
my 1% of that, though actually since robotics should function for years
on end, that's actually achieving way better than 0.01% impact per
mission.

B1ackwater offers this moon related topic;
NASA Back to Moon by 2018 - But WHY ?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...read/bfe561b9=
824b9f1a/ecfa8369f334ec56?hl=3Den#ecfa8369f334ec56
This is an extremely nice topic and as such it imposes a damn good set
of questions, especially since we're nearly bankrupt. However, since
"NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture", then perhaps we
village idiots can seriously discuss those potentially lethal physical
impacts, thermal issues, radioactive, reactive and atmospheric
environment about our moon that really summarily sucks worse off than
our resident warlord(GW Bush), especially by day unless you're one hell
of a robot that at most couldn't cost us 1% that of any manned
expedition, and not 0.1% if there's no return ticket to ride.

It seems the status quo is entirely taboo/nondisclosure yet somehow
that's perfectly fine and dandy for the likes of wizard "David
Knisely", whereas otherwise life involving the regular laws of physics
and hard-science that's the least bit outside the box is where pesky
morals or so much as having a stitch of remorse sucks because;
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.a...rm/thread/312=
c0ee1964db812/85e2050d1b0c9a78?rnum=3D11&hl=3Den&q=3Dbrad+guth&_ done=3D%2Fg=
roup%2Fsci.astro.amateur%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F3 12c0ee1964db812%2F8ee6a5d=
795a6cc43%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3Dbrad+guth%26rnum%3D7%26 hl%3Den%26#doc_abc3dca90e=
b703fc
There are some posters out there
who feel the need to formulate
their own elaborate theories
about the heavens and their fate.
And otherwise lord/rusemaster David Knisely having contributed yet
another very nicely worded mainstream status quo rant, which is exactly
why such all-knowing folks as Knisely are not likely going to
contribute an honest need-to-know squat upon this next related
sub-topic as to the lunar atmosphere and subsequent environment.

The temperature on moon surface is what I believe can become moderated
to suit, at least on behalf of greatly improving the odds on behalf of
robotics that can be robust and thus engineered so as to not care about
their local thermal or radioactive background dosage environment nor of
whatever's incoming that's producing all of that truly nasty
secondary/recoil worth of hard-X-rays. However, with having such a
crystal clear layer of Radon plus another extended layer of Argon
should create quit a well insulated surface baking environment that's
capable of getting a damn site hotter than the sort of hell reported by
our cloak and dagger MI6/NSA~NASA Apollo spooks.

In spite of all the brown-nosed minions of their mainstream status quo
that thinks and/or keeps insisting at we village idiots should only
think that we've already done that and been there, thus why all of
their need-to-know and/or taboo/nondisclosure that sucks and blows at
the same time, which only seems rather out of proper form, especially
when it appears that building/terraforming an artificial lunar
atmosphere for robotics has been doable without our ever risking so
much as one TBI white hair upon another astronaut:

Not that I'm insisting this as the one and only alternative, however
for further sportmanship reasons I'm thinking that the likes of Radon
gas should become liquid at night and, otherwise expand out to perhaps
an atmospheric depth of a km by day. Topped off by mostly argon that
might reach as far as 50 km by day and something less than 10 km by
nighttime/earthshine.

According to Mike Williams;
"The strength of the surface gravity (1.623 m/s/s) isn't the critical
factor. What's more significant is the escape velocity (Moon 2.38km/s,
Titan 2.65km/s)."

"The heavier gas sticks around but the useful gas escapes. The various
types of molecules settle down to having the same average kinetic
energy,
but that means that the lighter molecules move faster than the heavier
ones. They move just as fast, in fact, as if the heavier molecules were

not present."

"There's a piece of JavaScript on this page
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/kintem.html#c4
that will calculate the average molecular speed given the molecular
mass
and temperature. N2 molecules (m=3D28) on Titan (T=3D-197C) average 260m/s
which is about a tenth of the escape velocity. CO2 molecules (m=3D28) on
the Moon (daytime T=3D107C) average 464m/s which is about a fifth of the
escape velocity. That might sound OK, but not all molecules travel at
the average velocity, some travel faster and leak away. The Earth isn't
able to hold on to hydrogen molecules, and they average about a fifth
of
Earth's escape velocity."

"Radon atoms would travel at an average of 206m/s on the Moon, which
suggests that you could build an atmosphere of pure Radon."

Density of dry ice: anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 kg/dm=B3 depends upon
compactness (avg 1.5 g/cm3)
Frozen solid form at -78.5=B0 C
Sublimes at anything much hoter than -78=B0C
In a snowball form of compactness upon the moon it may represent less
than 1 g/cm3.

Radon, Rn atomic number: 86
Atomic mass: [222] gmol-1(no stable nuclide)
Isotope: 222Rn (222.017570)
Specific gravity of the liquid state is 4.4 g/cm3 at -62=B0C, and SG of
the solid state becomes 4 g/cm3, thus 4 tonnes/m3 if frozen solid and
especially frozen solid if that Rn were sequestered by the likes of
frozen CO2 at 1.5 g/mm3.

A cubic meter of each substance, that which Earth needs to get rid of
anyway, represents a composite sphere of 5.5~5.9 tonnes, and that's not
actually all that large of diameter of what can be easily directed at
impacting (not orbiting) the moon. From the zero-G vantage point of
such being accelerated from the nullification zone of roughly 60,000 km
away from the moon gives an hour, in that there's an unobstructed path
of least resistance that'll also benefit from the 1.623 m/s/s worth of
gravity, whereas this should not require all that much added thrust
energy for getting the final velocity up to good speed of final impact
becoming worth at least 30 km/s (9 fold better KE bang/kg than DEEP
IMPACT), although what's stopping us from achieving 60+km/s?.

Our moon is already fairly radioactive by several fold greater than
Earth, thus another clue that our moon is actually that of an icy
proto-moon as having arrived instead of being ejected out of Earth,
that plus the much having lesser density makes a whole lot more sense
than any spendy computer model that's keeping the likes of a Pope and
other terrestrial or but religions as happy campers.

Of course, my lunar terraforming notions of artificially bombing the
holy crap out of our moon with the likes of large blocks or spheres of
dry-ice having frozen Rn within, besides creating whatever horrific
meteor like impacts worth of vaporising lunar basalt into capably
releasing a ratio of 1e6:1 worth of O2, the very nature of the
delivered CO2 might subsequently revert to just good old elements of
co/o2 or perhaps react into just C and O2, whereas the Radon element
should have vanished within a few days unless we'd replaced and/or
supplemented that lunar bombing of frozen Rn with the likes of
including Ra226 which might even react quite nicely with the already
available He3 into making a nifty long-term supply of creating Rn.
After the Ra226 is sufficiently depleted, say in 6400 years it should
be at 1/16th of it's initial potency, and by then having established a
good amount of terraformed atmosphere as becoming the case since the
amount of continual Radon-222 would have extensively moderated the
hot/cold of the lunar day/night differential to something quite
manageable for the likes of holding onto O2, whereas by then there
shouldn't be hardly any significant local radioactive threat for naked
humans that could be safely accommodated for 60 earthshine days upon
the surface of our moon, that which a reasonably engineered moonsuit
couldn't manage, or at least sufficient as for accommodating the likes
of whomever we don't want living here on Earth (I have a growing list
of whom those folks should be, roughly the bulk of the upper 0.1% of
humanity that have been pillaging and raping mother Earth while
continually snookering the lower 99.9% of humanity, and I do believe
there should be plenty of available space on and/or within the moon for
accommodating each and every one of those 15e6 folks in spite of all
the deployed Ra226 that upon average shouldn't have modified the
already background radioactive terrain by more than 10%).

According to the above "Molecular Speed Calculation" of Argon-40, even
if the elevated average altitude represented at worst 100=B0C (373K)
would give Argon the maximum RMS velocity of 482.4 m/s which obviously
should stick around. Even that of O2-32 only jumps to an RMS velocity
of 539 m/s which should also stay put at least up until a truly nasty
solar wind of 1200~2400 km/s excavates such lighter mass elements away.

So, you tell me why artificially bombing our moon, and especially with
the sorts of nasty stuff that Earth is getting more and more desperate
to get rid of isn't such a good idea.
So stick to just the cold hard facts
and do not engage these fools.
As time goes on, they should then fade
and prove that knowledge rules!
- D. Knisely
Obviously this nifty rant closing was speaking on behalf of warning us
about himself, as for our not bothering to engage such mainstream
rusemasters because, doing so will only bring us MOS LLPOF infomercials
and thus wasting human talents, resources of expertise and energy as
well as sustaining collateral damage and continued carnage of the
innocent.

BTW; just because certain folks fade is more than likely because
they're too smart to waste valuable time and resources upon the lost
cause of humanity that's ruled by and thereby performing as brown-nosed
minions to the upper most 0.1%, of which the likes of lord D. Knisely
is apparently even somewhat above that.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.

Reed Snellenberger,
Perhaps we should try thinking "inflation" and thus in honest terms of
hundreds of billions and, that's not even including the afterbirth of
what each mission is going to further contribute towards pollution and,
as such damage even more of our failing albedo by way of taking it
directly into the nearest global warming space-toilet. At least
robotics wouldn't impact our environment by 1% of that amount, though
actually since robotics should function for years on end, that's
actually achieving way better than 0.01% impact per mission.

Since our "NASA formally unveils lunar exploration architecture", then
perhaps we village idiots can seriously discuss a few of those
potentially lethal physical impacts, thermal extremes, radioactive and
otherwise reactive facets and further about the atmospheric environment
of our moon that really sucks, especially by day unless you're one hell
of a robot and thus having no such DNA/RNA to fry or TBI to death.

It seems as though, by way of my going "usenet postal" along with my
trusty lose cannon has managed in spite of all of your defensive flak,
whereas I've managed to hit a few more of those tender mainstream
private parts, at least pricking a few of those status quo
nerve-endings. Thus is apparently why others are not even pitching
another one of their usual all-knowing and wag-the-dog efforts of
damage-control or any other fits over what terraforming our moon has to
offer, much less any notions of our sticking with almost if not
entirely as to whatever robotics has to offer in the way of achieving
the utmost bang for the almighty buck, while otherwise polluting mother
Earth the very least per deployed kg. Imagine that, apparently I'm
sufficiently right again and they're not.

Nuking our moon via a sub-frozen CO2 dirty-bombs worth of hosting
Ra-226/Rn-222 isn't quite the same thing as commonly thought of here
upon Earth.

Radium-226 which goes on and on with the process of creating Rn-222 gas
is exactly what could become easily delivered to our moon using
conventional SBRs as our Earth--moon torpedoes. Otherwise frozen
Rn-222 sequestered within frozen CO2 may have to accomplish the task if
folks can't take a hint as to what's otherwise possible.

B1ackwater offers this moon related topic;
NASA Back to Moon by 2018 - But WHY ?
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.s...read/bfe561b9=
824b9f1a/ecfa8369f334ec56?hl=3Den#ecfa8369f334ec56
This is an extremely nice topic and as such it imposes a damn good set
of rational questions and alternatives, especially important since
we're nearly bankrupt. However, since "NASA formally unveils lunar
exploration architecture", then perhaps we village idiots can seriously
discuss those potentially lethal physical impacts, thermal issues,
radioactive, reactive and atmospheric environment about our moon that
really summarily sucks worse off than our resident warlord(GW Bush),
especially by day unless you're one hell of a robot that at most
couldn't cost us 1% that of any manned expedition, and not 0.1% if
there's no return ticket to ride.

It seems the status quo is entirely mindset into their usual
taboo/nondisclosure yet somehow that's perfectly fine and dandy for the
likes of wizard "David Knisely", whereas otherwise life involving the
regular laws of physics and hard-science that's the least bit outside
the box is where pesky morals or so much as having a stitch of remorse
sucks because;
http://groups.google.com/group/sci.a...rm/thread/312=
c0ee1964db812/85e2050d1b0c9a78?rnum=3D11&hl=3Den&q=3Dbrad+guth&_ done=3D%2Fg=
roup%2Fsci.astro.amateur%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fthread%2F3 12c0ee1964db812%2F8ee6a5d=
795a6cc43%3Flnk%3Dst%26q%3Dbrad+guth%26rnum%3D7%26 hl%3Den%26#doc_abc3dca90e=
b703fc
There are some posters out there
who feel the need to formulate
their own elaborate theories
about the heavens and their fate.
And otherwise lord/rusemaster David Knisely having contributed yet
another very nicely worded mainstream status quo rant, which is exactly
why such all-knowing folks as Knisely are not all that likely going to
contribute an honest need-to-know squat upon this next related
sub-topic as to the lunar atmosphere and subsequent environment.

The temperature or rather the temperature extremes found on moon
surface is what I believe can become moderated to suit, at least on
behalf of greatly improving the odds on behalf of robotics that can be
robust and thus engineered so as to not care about their local thermal
or radioactive background dosage environment nor of whatever's incoming
that's producing all of that truly nasty secondary/recoil worth of
hard-X-rays. However, with having such a crystal clear layer of Radon
plus another extended layer of Argon should create quit a well
insulated surface baking environment that's capable of getting a damn
site hotter than the sort of hell reported by our cloak and dagger
MI6/NSA~NASA Apollo spooks.

In spite of all the brown-nosed minions of their mainstream status quo
that thinks and/or keeps insisting at we village idiots should only
think that we've already done that and been there, thus why all of
their need-to-know and/or taboo/nondisclosure that sucks and blows at
the same time, which only seems rather out of proper form, especially
when it appears that building/terraforming an artificial lunar
atmosphere for robotics has been doable without our ever risking so
much as one TBI white hair upon another astronaut:

Not that I'm insisting this as the one and only alternative, however
for further sportmanship reasons I'm thinking that the likes of Radon
gas should become liquid at night and, otherwise expand out to perhaps
an atmospheric depth of a km by day. Topped off by mostly argon that
might reach as far as 50 km by day and something less than 10 km by
nighttime/earthshine.

According to Mike Williams;
"The strength of the surface gravity (1.623 m/s/s) isn't the critical
factor. What's more significant is the escape velocity (Moon 2.38km/s,
Titan 2.65km/s)."

"The heavier gas sticks around but the useful gas escapes. The various
types of molecules settle down to having the same average kinetic
energy, but that means that the lighter molecules move faster than the
heavier ones. They move just as fast, in fact, as if the heavier
molecules were not present."

"There's a piece of JavaScript on this page
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/kinetic/kintem.html#c4
that will calculate the average molecular speed given the molecular
mass and temperature. N2 molecules (m=3D28) on Titan (T=3D-197C) average
260m/s which is about a tenth of the escape velocity. CO2 molecules
(m=3D28) on the Moon (daytime T=3D107C) average 464m/s which is about a
fifth of the escape velocity. That might sound OK, but not all
molecules travel at the average velocity, some travel faster and leak
away. The Earth isn't able to hold on to hydrogen molecules, and they
average about a fifth of
Earth's escape velocity."

"Radon atoms would travel at an average of 206m/s on the Moon, which
suggests that you could build an atmosphere of pure Radon."

Density of dry ice: anywhere from 1.2 to 1.6 kg/dm=B3 depends upon
compactness (avg 1.5 g/cm3)
Frozen solid form at -78.5=B0 C
Sublimes at anything much hoter than -78=B0C
In a snowball form of compactness upon the moon it may represent less
than 1 g/cm3.

Radon, Rn-222 atomic number: 86
Atomic mass: [222] gmol-1(no stable nuclide)
Isotope: 222Rn (222.017570)
Specific gravity of the liquid state is 4.4 g/cm3 at -62=B0C, and SG of
the solid state becomes 4 g/cm3, thus 4 tonnes/m3 if frozen solid and
especially frozen solid if that Rn were sequestered by the likes of
frozen CO2 at 1.5 g/mm3.

Radium-226 which creates Rn-222
Symbol: Ra
Atomic number: 88
Atomic weight: [226]

A cubic meter of each substance, be it CO2, Radium-226 or even
Radon-222 that which by most accounts is exactly what Earth needs to
get rid of anyway, may represent a composite sphere of 5.5~6 tonnes,
and even that's not going to actually be all that large of diameter of
what's encased within dry-ice that can be easily directed at impacting
(not orbiting) the moon. From the zero-G vantage point of such being
easily and thus efficiently accelerated from the nullification zone of
roughly 60,000 km away from the moon's surface might offer 3600
seconds, in that there's an unobstructed path of least resistance
that'll obviously benefit greatly from the final 1.623 m/s/s worth of
gravity assist, whereas this task should not require all that much
added thrust energy if any for getting the final velocity up to good
speed of final impact becoming worth 30 km/s (9 fold better KE bang/kg
than DEEP IMPACT). Although, what's in the path of stopping us from
achieving a roundabout head-on impact of 60+km/s?.

Impacting our moon with 6 tonnes worth of most any substance that's
arriving at 30 km/s should represent more than enouth KE for producing
6e6 tonnes of vaporised lunar basalt.

Our moon has been classified as already fairly radioactive by several
fold greater than Earth, thus another clue that our moon is actually
that of an ET icy proto-moon as having arrived instead of being ejected
out of Earth, that plus having the much lesser density makes a whole
lot more sense than any spendy computer model that's keeping the likes
of a Pope and other terrestrial or bust sorts of religions as happy
campers about their being the one and only intelligent life in the
entire universe, even thosgh that notion is a bit more depressing than
our having the likes of GW Bush as our resident warlord.

Of course, my lunar terraforming notions of artificially bombing the
holy crap out of our moon with the likes of large blocks or spheres of
dry-ice having frozen Rn within, besides creating whatever horrific
meteor like impacts worth of vaporising lunar basalt into capably
releasing a ratio of 1e6:1 worth of O2, the very nature of the
delivered CO2 might subsequently revert to just good old elements of
co/o2 or perhaps react into just C and O2, whereas the Radon element
should have vanished within a few days unless we'd replaced and/or
supplemented that lunar bombing of frozen Rn with the likes of
including Ra226 which might even react quite nicely with the already
available He3 into making a nifty long-term supply of creating Rn.
After the Ra226 is sufficiently depleted, say in 6400 years it should
be at 1/16th of it's initial potency, and by then having established a
good amount of terraformed atmosphere as becoming the case since the
amount of continual Radon-222 would have extensively moderated the
hot/cold of the lunar day/night differential to something quite
manageable for the likes of holding onto O2, whereas by then there
shouldn't be hardly any significant local radioactive threat for naked
humans that could be safely accommodated for 60 earthshine days upon
the surface of our moon, that which a reasonably engineered moonsuit
couldn't manage, or at least sufficient as for accommodating the likes
of whomever we don't want living here on Earth (I have a growing list
of whom those folks should be, roughly the bulk of the upper 0.1% of
humanity that have been pillaging and raping mother Earth while
continually snookering the lower 99.9% of humanity, and I do believe
there should be plenty of available space on and/or within the moon for
accommodating each and every one of those 15e6 folks in spite of all
the deployed Ra226 that upon average shouldn't have modified the
already background radioactive terrain by more than 10%).

According to the above "Molecular Speed Calculation" of Argon-40, even
if the elevated average altitude represented at worst 100=B0C (373K)
would give Argon the maximum RMS velocity of 482.4 m/s which obviously
should stick around. Even that of O2-32 only jumps to an RMS velocity
of 539 m/s which should also stay put at least up until a truly nasty
solar wind of 1200~2400 km/s excavates such lighter mass elements away.

So, you tell me why artificially bombing our moon, and especially with
the sorts of nasty stuff that Earth is getting more and more desperate
to get rid of isn't such a good idea.
So stick to just the cold hard facts
and do not engage these fools.
As time goes on, they should then fade
and prove that knowledge rules!
- D. Knisely
Obviously this nifty rant closing was speaking on behalf of warning us
about himself, as for our not bothering to engage such mainstream
rusemasters because, doing so will only bring us MOS LLPOF infomercials
and thus wasting human talents, resources of expertise and energy as
well as sustaining collateral damage and continued carnage of the
innocent.

BTW; just because certain folks fade is more than likely because theve
become too smart to waste valuable time and resources upon the lost
cause of humanity that's ruled by and thereby performing as brown-nosed
minions to the upper most 0.1%, of which the likes of lord D. Knisely
is apparently even somewhat above that.
~

Life upon Venus, a township w/Bridge & ET/UFO Park-n-Ride Tarmac:
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm
The Russian/China LSE-CM/ISS (Lunar Space Elevator)
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/lunar-space-elevator.htm
Venus ETs, plus the updated sub-topics; Brad Guth / GASA-IEIS
http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-topics.htm
War is war, thus "in war there are no rules" - In fact, war has been
the very reason of having to deal with the likes of others that haven't
been playing by whatever rules, such as GW Bush.