NASA Back to Moon by 2018 - But WHY ?

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:14:40 -0400, in a place far, far away, Alain
Fournier made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:


I think you misspelled "preventing Saudi Arabia from colonizing Iraq."

Saudi Arabia wasn't trying to colonize Iraq before Yankees went in.
And they haven't been trying since either even if a few Saudis
have been trying to overthrow the Iraqi government.


My, you're even more naive than I thought you were.

Well at least my naivety is more in line with reality then
what you write. It would be more helpful if you would say
what evidence you have that what I said is incorrect than
just to state that I am naive. Also, if Saudi Arabia was
really trying to colonize Iraq, maybe it would be better to
stop selling weaponry to the them, that would probably
be a better way to stop them from colonizing Iraq, that's
if they were really trying to colonize Iraq of course.


I'm all in favor of not selling weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudis have been attempting to colonize all of Arabia, and
even much of non-Arabia (what do you think the Taliban was?) for many
years.

That is not the Saudis who were doing that, it is some
Saudis. If you look up there you will see that I already
said that some Saudis were trying to overthrow the Iraqi
government and you replied that I was naive.


Alain Fournier

B1ackwater wrote:
(CNN) -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin rolled out NASA's plan for
the future Monday, including new details about the spaceship intended
to replace the shuttle and a timeline for returning astronauts to the
moon in 2018.

The design for the new crew exploration vehicle (CEV) looks a lot like
the Apollo-era spaceship that first took NASA to the moon a generation
ago. It is a similarity that is not lost on Griffin.

"Think of it as Apollo on steroids," he told reporters at NASA
headquarters in Washington.

Under the new NASA plan, a "moon shot" would actually require two
launches, both using rockets derived from shuttle launch hardware.

One unmanned, heavy-lift rocket would transport a lunar lander plus
supplies and other equipment to low-Earth orbit.

Afterward, a second rocket would carry a crew capsule capable of
transporting up to six astronauts into a similar orbit. The two would
dock with each other, and then head to the moon.

The first few missions are planned to put four astronauts on the
surface of the moon for a week, while the unoccupied mothership orbits
overhead.

. . . . .

OK - the question is "WHY ?". A few people for a few days at
a time ... it's just not worth doing (except to enrich certain
aerospace companies).

While doing the 'final frontier' thing is appealing, there just
HAS to be a little cost/benifit thinking done first. Describing
this particular endeavour as "Apollo on steroids" is quite apt -
because it doesn't seem to accomplish much beyond what Apollo
accomplished, just a little more of it for a lot more money.

IMHO, we should not return people to the moon until they're
in a position to STAY there, with plenty of company. This
means a whole different sort of program - with the first
phases being entirely robotic. First of all, a supply of
water MUST be found and exploited. Secondly, habitats and
equipment for a growing colony MUST be in place. Only then
should people start arriving.

Robots can explore, robots can drill and mine, robots can
construct habitats from imported and natural materials,
robots can assemble equipment - and do it cheaply, safely
and well. Any moon colony should be set up from the get-go
to be perpetually self-sustaining ... because financing it
from earth would be a perpetual and heavy drain on cash and
resources.

The moon is especially suited for using robots. Not only is
the gravity light and the solar-power potential high but it's
less than two light-seconds from earth. This means that
telepresence robots - with human operators or guiders on
earth - can be usefully employed. This will take up the
slack until the electronic intelligence folks come up with
some decent autonomous designs.

Robo-Ants - swarm IQ - may be very useful for exploring,
exploiting and building certain kinds of habitats. Smarter
bots will be necessary to run/maintain certain kinds of
equipment. Field-usable designs seem to still be ten or
twenty years away. We've got the computing power now, but
aren't sure what to do with it. 'Smart' is more than
gigaFLOPS, it's doing the right things in the right order,
'mind' -vs- 'mess'.

Lessons and techniques learned from moon-bots can then be
applied to the NEXT big step - mars.

In any event, it never hurts to put our eggs in more than
one planetary basket, but the next step is to MAKE the
damned basket rather than just shuttle veritible tourists
to the moon and back and watch them do pretty much exactly
what their predecessors did before. The 'next step' isn't
one of volume, doing more of the same old crap, but a whole
different paradigm - colonization. THAT will be worth the
money and effort.


I agree with you 100%, we shouldn't go to the moon just to do it again,
it should be to stay and establish a permanent base. Robotics simply
make sense to do the basic set up work, lots of digging in, because you
wouldn't need to build structures on the moon, simply dig in and carve
your space out, because meteors still strike the surface of the moon,
and they aren't slowed by atmosphere. Dig in, seal the walls, floor,
and ceiling, then pressurize. Use as many square miles of photovoltaic
cells as required to power the place, raw sunlight being chock full of
power.






Hell, if you
pressurized the central chamber high enough, You could literally strap
on wings and fly in the thick air, weighing only 1/6 of what you weigh
on earth. A true human powered flight.

Scotius wrote:

Helium 3 can be fused like
hydrogen, and can provide tremendous energy. It also has a far lower
fusion reaction temperature than hydrogen

Uhh... sorry, but the ignition temperature for D-3He fusion is about
ten times *higher* than that for D-T, which we're far from mastering.

Not that that has slowed the hatching of a thousand confident plans
for PROFITS IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE...

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:14:40 -0400, in a place far, far away, Alain
Fournier made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

I think you misspelled "preventing Saudi Arabia from colonizing Iraq."

Saudi Arabia wasn't trying to colonize Iraq before Yankees went in.
And they haven't been trying since either even if a few Saudis
have been trying to overthrow the Iraqi government.


My, you're even more naive than I thought you were.

Well at least my naivety is more in line with reality then
what you write. It would be more helpful if you would say
what evidence you have that what I said is incorrect than
just to state that I am naive. Also, if Saudi Arabia was
really trying to colonize Iraq, maybe it would be better to
stop selling weaponry to the them, that would probably
be a better way to stop them from colonizing Iraq, that's
if they were really trying to colonize Iraq of course.

I'm all in favor of not selling weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudis have been attempting to colonize all of Arabia, and
even much of non-Arabia (what do you think the Taliban was?) for many
years. We just weren't paying attention up until September 10th...

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 23:25:38 -0400, "J.J."
wrote:

I agree with you 100%, we shouldn't go to the moon just to do it again,
it should be to stay and establish a permanent base. Robotics simply
make sense to do the basic set up work, lots of digging in, because you
wouldn't need to build structures on the moon, simply dig in and carve
your space out, because meteors still strike the surface of the moon,
and they aren't slowed by atmosphere. Dig in, seal the walls, floor,
and ceiling, then pressurize. Use as many square miles of photovoltaic
cells as required to power the place, raw sunlight being chock full of
power.

NASA's current plan is not such a bad start for going down this
grander colonization route. Their main issue is to try and minimise
their launch costs.

Having a small base on the Moon is an idea to begin with, when someone
will need to service your remote controlled heavy construction and
mining equipment when it breaks down.

Also I just cannot see that digging long tunnels and open caverns into
the ground can be done efficiently using remote controlled robots. It
may be possible, but such projects on Earth usually need quite a lot
of human assistance.

In this respect it would be better to have your bouncy castle
equipment servicing mini-base first. Your quite small underground and
pressurized base second. Then to use your first wave of colony people
to enlarge the area that they are already living in.

And this enlarging base would need to be made fully self-supporting,
with home grown water, oxygen, food, power, etc. Then once they are
homed up you can see about large scale refining and construction.

They would still need a few things from Earth, like in the case of
electronics. This should mostly be small scale items though.

I am not sure how much of your air would leak out through the rock
above you, but I am sure that there would be methods to counteract
this. Digging down deeper would be one method.

This would seem like a better objective than ISS on the Moon. About
two people rotated each six months. And they learn to do a few things
on the smaller scale. Growing their own food not being one of them. I
would also doubt doing their own oxygen production either.

Not exactly living off the land in other words.

Cardman.

On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 22:01:01 -0400, in a place far, far away, Alain
Fournier made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

My, you're even more naive than I thought you were.

Well at least my naivety is more in line with reality then
what you write. It would be more helpful if you would say
what evidence you have that what I said is incorrect than
just to state that I am naive. Also, if Saudi Arabia was
really trying to colonize Iraq, maybe it would be better to
stop selling weaponry to the them, that would probably
be a better way to stop them from colonizing Iraq, that's
if they were really trying to colonize Iraq of course.


I'm all in favor of not selling weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudis have been attempting to colonize all of Arabia, and
even much of non-Arabia (what do you think the Taliban was?) for many
years.

That is not the Saudis who were doing that, it is some
Saudis. If you look up there you will see that I already
said that some Saudis were trying to overthrow the Iraqi
government and you replied that I was naive.

Your said it was a "few" Saudis who were doing that. I think it's
much more than that, hence my observation.

On Mon, 19 Sep 2005 22:10:00 GMT, (B1ackwater) wrote:

(CNN) -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin rolled out NASA's plan for
the future Monday, including new details about the spaceship intended
to replace the shuttle and a timeline for returning astronauts to the
moon in 2018.

The design for the new crew exploration vehicle (CEV) looks a lot like
the Apollo-era spaceship that first took NASA to the moon a generation
ago. It is a similarity that is not lost on Griffin.

"Think of it as Apollo on steroids," he told reporters at NASA
headquarters in Washington.

Under the new NASA plan, a "moon shot" would actually require two
launches, both using rockets derived from shuttle launch hardware.

One unmanned, heavy-lift rocket would transport a lunar lander plus
supplies and other equipment to low-Earth orbit.

Afterward, a second rocket would carry a crew capsule capable of
transporting up to six astronauts into a similar orbit. The two would
dock with each other, and then head to the moon.

The first few missions are planned to put four astronauts on the
surface of the moon for a week, while the unoccupied mothership orbits
overhead.

. . . . .

OK - the question is "WHY ?". A few people for a few days at
a time ... it's just not worth doing (except to enrich certain
aerospace companies).

While doing the 'final frontier' thing is appealing, there just
HAS to be a little cost/benifit thinking done first. Describing
this particular endeavour as "Apollo on steroids" is quite apt -
because it doesn't seem to accomplish much beyond what Apollo
accomplished, just a little more of it for a lot more money.

IMHO, we should not return people to the moon until they're
in a position to STAY there, with plenty of company. This
means a whole different sort of program - with the first
phases being entirely robotic. First of all, a supply of
water MUST be found and exploited. Secondly, habitats and
equipment for a growing colony MUST be in place. Only then
should people start arriving.

Robots can explore, robots can drill and mine, robots can
construct habitats from imported and natural materials,
robots can assemble equipment - and do it cheaply, safely
and well. Any moon colony should be set up from the get-go
to be perpetually self-sustaining ... because financing it
from earth would be a perpetual and heavy drain on cash and
resources.

The moon is especially suited for using robots. Not only is
the gravity light and the solar-power potential high but it's
less than two light-seconds from earth. This means that
telepresence robots - with human operators or guiders on
earth - can be usefully employed. This will take up the
slack until the electronic intelligence folks come up with
some decent autonomous designs.

Robo-Ants - swarm IQ - may be very useful for exploring,
exploiting and building certain kinds of habitats. Smarter
bots will be necessary to run/maintain certain kinds of
equipment. Field-usable designs seem to still be ten or
twenty years away. We've got the computing power now, but
aren't sure what to do with it. 'Smart' is more than
gigaFLOPS, it's doing the right things in the right order,
'mind' -vs- 'mess'.

Lessons and techniques learned from moon-bots can then be
applied to the NEXT big step - mars.

In any event, it never hurts to put our eggs in more than
one planetary basket, but the next step is to MAKE the
damned basket rather than just shuttle veritible tourists
to the moon and back and watch them do pretty much exactly
what their predecessors did before. The 'next step' isn't
one of volume, doing more of the same old crap, but a whole
different paradigm - colonization. THAT will be worth the
money and effort.

I would hope there's a better reason for going back to the
moon than enriching a few aerospace companies. There is water on the
moon, which could be broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to fuel a
rocket engine for travel farther out than the moon, and there are also
vast deposits of helium 3 on the moon. Helium 3 can be fused like
hydrogen, and can provide tremendous energy. It also has a far lower
fusion reaction temperature than hydrogen, so it looks doable as an
energy system for a potential moon base. They better have a better
reason for wanting to set one up than to beat the Chinese there
however. We don't need another Cold War if it can be avoided.

Cardman wrote:

NASA's current plan is not such a bad start for going down this
grander colonization route. Their main issue is to try and minimise
their launch costs.

Huh? Either you are seriously deluded about how much this "plan" will
cost, or you are expressing yourself very poorly.

Also I just cannot see that digging long tunnels and open caverns into
the ground can be done efficiently using remote controlled robots. It
may be possible, but such projects on Earth usually need quite a lot
of human assistance.

NASA just announced a competition for digging robots as part of the
Centennial Challenges.

On Fri, 23 Sep 2005 11:34:26 GMT, Alan Anderson
wrote:

Cardman wrote:

NASA's current plan is not such a bad start for going down this
grander colonization route. Their main issue is to try and minimise
their launch costs.

Huh? Either you are seriously deluded about how much this "plan" will
cost, or you are expressing yourself very poorly.

They would have a lot to launch from Earth. So getting the best launch
price per kg is the ideal. A resulting low cost launch market can
better help future trade between these two places.

Also I just cannot see that digging long tunnels and open caverns into
the ground can be done efficiently using remote controlled robots. It
may be possible, but such projects on Earth usually need quite a lot
of human assistance.

NASA just announced a competition for digging robots as part of the
Centennial Challenges.

Fine for sample collection no doubt, but the words "remote controlled
heavy regolith moving vehicles" sounds much better, even if the
"heavy" part is bound to be a lot more light weight.

So a remote controlled bulldozer, digger, and at least two dumper
trucks, and they are all set to move lots of regolith.

Cardman.

100 billion dollars later, and we'll have some more moon rocks for
science classes.