If You Could Cause Someone to Land on the Moon Tomorrow by Sending NASA $5 Today, Would You Do it?

"Sure, it's worthwhile. Unlike the untold trillions spent in the U.S.
on various forms of welfare that just results in more of them
breeding, needing more welfare, which cuts into productivity and other
programs. However, they should NOT have wasted $150B on the space
station, it killed planetary exploration."

Given the complexity and timeline of space station activities it seems
really strange that even someone like me who is a fan of manned space can't
name one thing that's been done there that benefitted anybody. When there's
an argument about it's cost I usually post a request for one grand
accomplishment - we were promised many - other than the mythical super
salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the
Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers. Lots of people think we have to keep
it going - What will we get back? - Again I've never heard anything except -
we're now at a point when paybacks will start. Really. NASA had requests out
for proposals for research on the ISS - so maybe they don't know either. I
can't help but think it will never be more that a Political Science
experiment gone wrong that's taken on a life if it's own. The shuttle was
supposed to make access to space cheap and rapid. I have a copy of a US
Senate letter that projected $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround, 50
launches a year. OK that was 1980 dollars - but now we have 4 month plus
turn around, $650 Million per launch. (Just to put reality in that increase
consider a car that cost $5,000 in 1980 costing $325,000 now - it's not just
inflation) The shuttle was a bad path - the technology just wasn't ready and
the space station kept it alive. And is still keeping it alive. It's a shame
Apollo Applications was cancelled in favor of this route. If you dig out the
old plans you'll find - semi permanent lunarbases, Lunar reconnisance
orbiters, manned venus flybys, deeper space missions etc. All based on the
Saturn V and modified Apollo hardware like the Block 4 Command Module.
(Block 2 went to the moon).

On Aug 6, 11:45*am, "Val Kraut" wrote:
"Sure, it's worthwhile. *Unlike the untold trillions spent in the U.S.
on various forms of welfare that just results in more of them
breeding, needing more welfare, which cuts into productivity and other
programs. *However, they should NOT have wasted $150B on the space
station, it killed planetary exploration."

Given the complexity and timeline of space station activities it seems
really strange that even someone like me who is a fan of manned space can't
name one thing that's been done there that benefitted anybody. When there's
an argument about it's cost I usually post a request for one grand
accomplishment - we were promised many - other than the mythical super
salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the
Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers. Lots of people think we have to keep
it going - What will we get back? - Again I've never heard anything except -
we're now at a point when paybacks will start. Really. NASA had requests out
for proposals for research on the ISS - so maybe they don't know either. I
can't help but think it will never be more that a Political Science
experiment gone wrong that's taken on a life if it's own. The shuttle was
supposed to make access to space cheap and rapid. I have a copy of a US
Senate letter that projected $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround, 50
launches a year. OK that was 1980 dollars - but now we have 4 month plus
turn around, $650 Million per launch. (Just to put reality in that increase
consider a car that cost $5,000 in 1980 costing $325,000 now - it's not just
inflation) The shuttle was a bad path - the technology just wasn't ready and
the space station kept it alive. And is still keeping it alive. It's a shame
Apollo Applications was cancelled in favor of this route. If you dig out the
old plans you'll find - semi permanent lunarbases, Lunar reconnisance
orbiters, manned venus flybys, deeper space missions etc. All based on the
Saturn V and modified Apollo hardware like the Block 4 Command Module.
(Block 2 went to the moon).

Any society has choices - go forward or stagnate and collapse.
Recent US administrations have decided to stagnate and collapse.
(We are collapsing now - in case you haven't noticed)

Bush was just lying (as usual) when he nattered about some future
(always 'future') plans to go to Mars.
Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his
turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the
moon)!

Kennedy (the last 'good' president), sent the US to the moon 50 years
ago.
And the conniving, inept, little neocon puppet men who have followed
him have sent you and the country to 2nd rate status.

Any society has choices - go forward or stagnate and collapse.
Recent US administrations have decided to stagnate and collapse.
(We are collapsing now - in case you haven't noticed)

This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the
large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could
have had colonies in Europe.

Bush was just lying (as usual) when he nattered about some future
(always 'future') plans to go to Mars.

I think things were a bit more complicated - at the time there was
discussions of closing half the NASA centers and ending the shuttle to free
up budget. Much like we closed obsolete military bases. Then when the local
politicians like Pelosi screamed no, we got into the 10 healthy NASA centers
mantra, with many design decisions being made by the political science folks
instead of the rocket science folks. There was talk of building the Lunar
Lander at the Cape because it was too large to ship. Then they build a
thermal vacuum chamber near Sandusky Ohio to test the Constellation
vehicles. We didn't have the money for Altair - but multiple NASA centers
were already building and testing protoype surface rovers - and still are.

Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his
turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the
moon)!

Obama as a senator introduced legislation to kill NASA and spend the money
on welfare - the new Proxmire. Look at the mission he gives to the
director - go make friends in the third world. Obama confirms it, then
denies it, but it's being done. To go where no NASA director has ever gone
before - the UAE. What else has Bolden actually done. I'd love to know the
real politics behind the Augustine Report. Let's go look at a mathematical
point in space - I remember being on a cruise where three old ladies ran to
the window to get a glimpse of the Artic Circle. Or is it just rally around
the part Lockheed already has.

Kennedy (the last 'good' president), sent the US to the moon 50 years
ago.
And the conniving, inept, little neocon puppet men who have followed
him have sent you and the country to 2nd rate status.

I worked on Apollo - those were great days. Apollo had a mission, was a
national effort, and we made it really happen.
NASA was new Kennedy had a clearly defined goal, and you didn't have the
centers fighting each other for funds. Constellation was a logical extension
to Apollo - yet we had celebrites like Buzz running around saying - we
already did that - and people buying it.

On Aug 6, 12:45*pm, lorad wrote:
On Aug 6, 11:45*am, "Val Kraut" wrote:





"Sure, it's worthwhile. *Unlike the untold trillions spent in the U.S..
on various forms of welfare that just results in more of them
breeding, needing more welfare, which cuts into productivity and other
programs. *However, they should NOT have wasted $150B on the space
station, it killed planetary exploration."

Given the complexity and timeline of space station activities it seems
really strange that even someone like me who is a fan of manned space can't
name one thing that's been done there that benefitted anybody. When there's
an argument about it's cost I usually post a request for one grand
accomplishment - we were promised many - other than the mythical super
salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the
Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers. Lots of people think we have to keep
it going - What will we get back? - Again I've never heard anything except -
we're now at a point when paybacks will start. Really. NASA had requests out
for proposals for research on the ISS - so maybe they don't know either.. I
can't help but think it will never be more that a Political Science
experiment gone wrong that's taken on a life if it's own. The shuttle was
supposed to make access to space cheap and rapid. I have a copy of a US
Senate letter that projected $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround, 50
launches a year. OK that was 1980 dollars - but now we have 4 month plus
turn around, $650 Million per launch. (Just to put reality in that increase
consider a car that cost $5,000 in 1980 costing $325,000 now - it's not just
inflation) The shuttle was a bad path - the technology just wasn't ready and
the space station kept it alive. And is still keeping it alive. It's a shame
Apollo Applications was cancelled in favor of this route. If you dig out the
old plans you'll find - semi permanent lunarbases, Lunar reconnisance
orbiters, manned venus flybys, deeper space missions etc. All based on the
Saturn V and modified Apollo hardware like the Block 4 Command Module.
(Block 2 went to the moon).

Any society has choices - go forward or stagnate and collapse.
Recent US administrations have decided to stagnate and collapse.
(We are collapsing now - in case you haven't noticed)

Bush was just lying (as usual) when he nattered about some future
(always 'future') plans to go to Mars.
Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his
turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the
moon)!

Kennedy (the last 'good' president), sent the US to the moon 50 years
ago.
And the conniving, inept, little neocon puppet men who have followed
him have sent you and the country to 2nd rate status.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

If I could I would go back in history and send bush anywhere but the
white house, he set the stage for WW3

On 8/6/2010 7:45 AM, Val Kraut wrote:
other than the mythical super
salmonella strain that could be bred there (Is this a good idea? - read the
Andromeda Strain), I get zero answers.

Meanwhile, back at Astrotech Corporation, whose subsidiary is working on
the Super Space Germ Vaccines, everybody was abuzz about the stock value
actually cracking $1.50 per share.
This was probably due to the company's president being fired back on
July 16th:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Astrot....html?x=0&.v=1
To follow up the General leaving back in June:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Gen-Re....html?x=0&.v=1

Pat

On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:

This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the
large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could
have had colonies in Europe.

That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the
things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the
cost of running it, it was a net money loser.

Pat

On 8/7/2010 2:00 AM, Pat Flannery wrote:


That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the
things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the
cost of running it, it was a net money loser.

There's a whole book on that fleet BTW, called "When China Ruled The Seas"
The fleet was made ready and stocked with high quality trade goods for
its voyages through the Indian ocean and down the east coast of Africa.
But all that would come back on it were things like raw ivory and live
giraffes; and once the novelty of the giraffes wore off, it was realized
that the area it was sailing to didn't have anything equal or greater in
value to the trade goods. Spices from the area could be obtained by land
routes or small vessels coming and going from Chinese ports.
In a lot of ways, this is indeed very similar to the current manned
space program - we brought some rocks back from the Moon, the novelty of
them wore off, and it's going to take a lot of economic worth coming out
of the ISS to ever justify the cost of building, crewing, and supplying
it...and there's been no sign of that occurring yet.

Pat

On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:

Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his
turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the
moon)!

Or maybe not:
http://www.phenomenica.com/2010/08/m...reviously.html

Pat

On Aug 7, 8:45 am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:

Obamba just flat out said 'We ain't goin' nowhere' when it was his
turn (the week after massive deposits of water were found on the
moon)!

Or maybe not:http://www.phenomenica.com/2010/08/m...-as-previously....

Pat

Recent data from Chandrayaan 1 and LRO seem to indicate ice sheets at
least 2 meters thick:

http://blogs.airspacemag.com/moon/20...e-of-the-moon/
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/Mi..._deposits.html

Some casual space buffs have conflated this with McCubbins' recent
speculation that the moon may have more water in it's interior:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/n...dings-science/

While your phenomenica link may call McCubbin's theory into question,
it does absolutely nothing to contradict the Chandrayaan-1 and LRO
findings. The water in the very cold polar craters is thought to be
frozen out gasses left over from cometary impacts. Not many (if any)
believe the polar ice is from the moon's interior.

On Aug 7, 6:00*am, Pat Flannery wrote:
On 8/6/2010 10:46 AM, Val Kraut wrote:

This is where I like to tell the story of the Ming Dynasty outlawing the
large exploration ships to keep the merchant class in place. China could
have had colonies in Europe.

That wasn't the reason they scrapped their fleet - when the worth of the
things the treasure fleet was bringing back was measured against the
cost of running it, it was a net money loser.

Pat

Got sources for that conclusion?
I question its veracity.