Bush may announce return to the moon

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 21:00:20 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

In article ,
Christopher wrote:
Isn't it amazing what a little bit of competition can do to the
American administration psychic after decades of stagmentation.

That is jumping to conclusions about three levels deep. Any action at all
by the Administration is speculation right now, not fact. Action that is
actually backed up by political capital is a whole different level of
speculation, as witness what happened when Bush Sr. didn't back up *his*
call for action in space. And the idea that Washington is shaking in its
boots at the sight of the Chinese in space, and is doing this as a hasty
response, is ludicrous -- anything that happens here is a response to
Columbia, not Shenzhou.

I also said : Wheather it'll turn out as hollow as his fathers space
proclamation we will just have to wait and see what happens. :-)


Christopher
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
"Kites rise highest against
the wind - not with it."
Winston Churchill

7
"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 08:37:20 +0100, in a place far, far away, "Dr. O"
dr.o@xxxxx made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as to
indicate that:

In light of the
enormous deficits being raked up the the Administration at the moment, I
don't think the U.S. will be able to fund another space race or a manned
return to the moon. So cooperation is the only logical alternative, even
though many politicians won't like it. Many the Administration will try
to
get the Europeans on board, which will be politically more palatable.

That's utter nonsense. If we decide to go to the Moon, we can easily
afford it by ourselves, and historically, cooperation tends to raise
costs, not reduce them. The problem is that it's not very important,
not that we lack the money.


And risk blowing up the world's financial system and a complete collapse of
the U.S. dollar? Unlikely.

"Dr. O" dr.o@xxxxx wrote in message
...


Europe does have the technical knowledge to do this, but they lack the
'hand's on experience' the U.S. has. And the common historical ancestry of
the E.U. and U.S. all but excludes them becoming antagonists (aside from a
some grumbling, off course).

And that worked so well for, say, Britain and Germany in the openning years
of the 20th century...

Or, for that matter, many European conflicts.

Dave

On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:33:52 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dave
O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

That's utter nonsense. If we decide to go to the Moon, we can easily
afford it by ourselves, and historically, cooperation tends to raise
costs, not reduce them. The problem is that it's not very important,
not that we lack the money.

Looking at the ISS the problem is not the international cooperation but the
way it was done.

If NASA had subcontracted directly for a basic Mir 2 style station the costs
would have been significantly lower than the beast we have, or rather
haven't got in orbit now.

That's not "international cooperation."

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"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 01 Nov 2003 17:33:52 GMT, in a place far, far away, "Dave
O'Neill" dave @ NOSPAM atomicrazor . com made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

That's utter nonsense. If we decide to go to the Moon, we can easily
afford it by ourselves, and historically, cooperation tends to raise
costs, not reduce them. The problem is that it's not very important,
not that we lack the money.

Looking at the ISS the problem is not the international cooperation but
the
way it was done.

If NASA had subcontracted directly for a basic Mir 2 style station the
costs
would have been significantly lower than the beast we have, or rather
haven't got in orbit now.

That's not "international cooperation."

It would have required it.

Christopher wrote:


Us here will all be long dead by then though.

Which seems to be the problem with our leaders. If it isn't affecting
them in the next few years, screw it - it's the next person's problem.

I think the Chinese will do it first as they understand the problems of
overpopulation and also have no shortage of labor and raw materials.

JRS: In article , seen in
news:sci.space.policy, Christopher posted at Sun,
2 Nov 2003 10:45:27 :-

Maybe, but historically France has always had a cosy relationship with
Russia which does have hands on experience.

Always? I'm sure that, even without Tchaikovsky, the Russians would not
have forgotten 1812. And, AFAIK, no Frenchman has ever transported an
inebriated Tsar in a wheelbarrow, as was done in Britain.

--
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John Savard wrote:

He certainly could direct NASA to submit a proposal for returning to
the Moon, and then, after the proposal is in, it would be considered
for funding. This perhaps was what the original news item was really
claiming he would announce, and this, of course, would make sense.

I have no problem with this. NASA is the wrong way to go about it
as it takes years to innovate or do anything even halfway well.
All for a few billion dollars.

Meanwhile private firms and contractors are putting satellites into
orbit and buidling terraspheres and submersables and...

And making a profit at it. NASA is in fact holding us back, like
most bloated government agencies.

Joseph Oberlander wrote:

One shuttle load every month is a joke - we'd take 40 years at this rate
to even get enough TO the moon to start a colony. How long would it take
to dissassemble and ship one of those tunnel-borers into orbit, for
instance? We'd need at least one machine like that to dig tunnels and
caverns. If we could get that much into orbit every few months, we'd
be there in a decade.

Did a bit of research. A typical 20ft diameter borer weighs about 200-250 tons.
That's not including another 100 tons of support equipment, facilities to make
tunnel wall section out of moon rock/soil, and generators to power the beasts.

Without big machines like this, though, we are going nowhere fast as far
as colonization goes, so we need to figure out how to get 50-100 tons
at a time up into orbit. 500 would be better, but I can only imagine how
huge the ship would be.(otoh, 3-5 loads would be enough to set up a boring
facility and reactors and such).

Q: how big would a ship have to be to lift that much into orbit?

I think something like a refit of an Antonov 225 would be a good start.
We have a 250 ton capacity plane already - all we need to do is get it
into orbit. Ship entire space stations in one massive load. In fact,
it might be easier to build the rear section as an expendable unit and
have the cockpit as a re-entry vehicle. Probably a lot cheaper than
the same number of shuttle launches.(okay - a LOT cheaper)

10 meters diameter, 70 meters long. Pressurized cargo cabin. This seems
like a perfect candidate for a refit as it already gets into the air
under its own power.

http://www.air.foyle.co.uk/services/an225.asp

This thing dwarfs that shuttle prototype in the picture.

As a shuttle booster alone, it would save billions every year. It can load
a small shuttle on its back and get up to a bit over 6 miles high. Perfect
for a first booster stage. Launches could take place every day with a few
of these - and no messy monstrous rockets, either.

Joseph Oberlander wrote in message link.net...
Reguardless, our future is eventually in space. If for no other
reason that in a few hundred million years, the earth will be
seething cauldron since the sun is slowly getting warmer.

It more importantly gives us the option to do one thing no other
sepecies on Earth has been able to accomplish - to finally be
immune to being wiped out by some disaster.

Interestingly, quite a many people are sold on this very easily. But
you see, it might save us from some natural disaster like planet
buster asteroid, but it wont necessarily save us from man-made
disasters.
Consider a worm-type computer virus. As long as there is a datalink
between your Mars colony and Earth, it can cross the interplanetary
space. Now with advances of robotics and nanomachinery, increasingly
more machines are going to be controlled by computers, thus these
machines can be affected by a virus. Virus on a PC can be physically
harmless, virus on a Aibo could be of slight nuisance ...

-kert