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Moon Base

Skeptical Greg

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Skeptical Greg
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Bush to seek manned flights to moon, Mars

I think a manned Moon base is essential to the inevitable evacuation ( extinction being the only alternative ) of the Solar System by human beings..

Why should we wait to get started?

I don't think arguments like " Well, we should take care of all the problems on Earth First, i.e. money better spent etc.. " are not very valid, since it is unlikely that those problems will ever be solved 100% to anyone's satisfaction...
 
Shielding from cosmic radiation is a huge problem for extended trips outside the earth's protective envelope (what, magetosphere, I guess?). Short trips to the moon aren't so bad, but extended ones... Soviet cosmonauts who have spent a long time in earth orbit are said to have an alarmingly high incidence of all sorts of nasty cancers and tumors (yeah, anecdotal, I know). A trip to Mars? Questions of survival just getting there. Anyone have a source for NASA studies on this?
 
The whole thing p!sses me off.

Why? Because there will won't be any moon base in the foreseeable future. Bush is gonna get us to the moon (again!), and then he'll cut all funding for the program to go invade some other country under the guise of fighting 'terrorism'. He's either a fool or a con artist if he says the 'moon base' will happen during or immediately after his presidency. And he or his advisors already know this.

We've been working steadily for years to go to Mars. We've sent a whole bunch of robots and probes. The next logical step: humans. But evidently, Bush has looked at the expenses at that and said: "F### that, let's just land on the moon again!"

Wow. How amazingly retro.

What is the fricking point?

Amazing. We get the fundies on a constant basis picketing hither and thither, and yet, when we get a very serious issue that has important implications for our explorations of space for the next 30 years, we don't have crowds of white-coated bespectacled protesters outside the White House with signs saying "Mars or bust!" "Moon -> hell no, we won't go!" "Bush has gone Loony for the Moon!"
 
Kullervo said:
Shielding from cosmic radiation is a huge problem for extended trips outside the earth's protective envelope (what, magetosphere, I guess?). Short trips to the moon aren't so bad, but extended ones... Soviet cosmonauts who have spent a long time in earth orbit are said to have an alarmingly high incidence of all sorts of nasty cancers and tumors (yeah, anecdotal, I know). A trip to Mars? Questions of survival just getting there. Anyone have a source for NASA studies on this?
Click to expand...

As I pointed out, this ( radiation ) will be a bigger problem in a few billion years when the Sun goes Red Giant on us.. And why I think we need to go to work on it now.. Why wait? When will be a good time?
 
It's merely a question of will. I point out the radiation factor because I think it's the major hazard to be overcome. Even the pseudonymous Victor Appelton II realized that Tomasite plastic was a necessary prerequisite for safe handling of nuclear materials. And I don't think we have any of that yet.

I think the next major technological breakthroughs in space travel will have to happen here first, and the big ones will involve the preservation of human life in an environment not quite as hostile as the earth after the sun goes red giant. We know we can get into space and back. The problem is getting there, staying alive, and reproducing without incurring fatal mutations. Heck, we may need that here before the planet gets crisped.

Where's your avatar? I miss the little guy.
 
bignickel said:
The whole thing p!sses me off.

Why? Because there will won't be any moon base in the foreseeable future. Bush is gonna get us to the moon (again!), and then he'll cut all funding for the program to go invade some other country under the guise of fighting 'terrorism'. He's either a fool or a con artist if he says the 'moon base' will happen during or immediately after his presidency. And he or his advisors already know this.

…snip…
Click to expand...

But perhaps someone will suggest to Bush that we should place nuclear missiles and big ray guns on the moon as part of his daft missile shield - then it would get all the funding required...
 
If that happens, then the nuclear piles will all blow, launching the moon out of orbit, and sending it through-out the galaxy to have crazy adventures.

I think there was a TV show about it once.


I think it was called "The 'Moon that was blown out of orbit and had crazy adventures' Show"
 
Kullervo said:



Where's your avatar? I miss the little guy.
Click to expand...


He is soon to return.. I just haven't got around to taking his Christmas Elf hat off, and getting him back into proper uniform..

P.S.

I realize there are a lot of problems to solve before we evacuate the Sol system.. I just think a lot of people think of a few billion years as ' never '...


I think there is a pretty good chance that humans will become extinct before evacuation is possible.. However, it would be comforting to know that the need ( to evacuate ) is more widely recognized in my lifetime..
 
Billions of years to evacuate Sol system? I was thinking a couple hundreds or thousands of years, seeing how exponentially fast technology evolves.
 
Frostbite said:
Billions of years to evacuate Sol system? I was thinking a couple hundreds or thousands of years, seeing how exponentially fast technology evolves.
Click to expand...
I suspect you don't mean evacuate in the sense of getting all the humans out of the solar system (and probably the agriculture and food animals, too), but rather, getting a sustainable population and life support out of here.

Do you know Olaf Stapledon's First and Last Men?
 
Bunk, bunk, bunk.

One can do far more science with robotic spacecraft. With manned flight, 99% of the cost and effort goes to keeping the crew alive and healthy. Very little science is being done on the ISS...

Furthermore, any plan for sending men to Mars requires reliable and sophisticated robotic craft to land supplies and fuel (or fuel making factories) in advance of the manned mission. So the first step, whether one plans on exploring Mars by men or robots, is to develop the craft needed to lift large payloads to Mars and land them in precise locations.

The moon is irrelevant to any of that. Perhaps someone can explain to me the advantage of stopping at the moon first rather than going to Mars directly from earth orbit.

The far side of the moon would be a good place for a giant radio telescope, which I think is the only manned space mission/station that makes any scientific sense to me.

Of course, the far side of the moon could also be used for super secret nuclear testing...
 
Frostbite said:
Billions of years to evacuate Sol system? I was thinking a couple hundreds or thousands of years, seeing how exponentially fast technology evolves.
Click to expand...

I was saying it needs to be done within a few billion years.. Not that it would take that long...
 
I was going to ask the same question that patnray already asked - if the goal is to go to Mars, what good does it do anyone to build a base on the Moon? You just have to use up extra fuel getting into *and* out of its gravity well.

I assuming that there isn't anything on the Moon that we actually need for the trip, but if I'm wrong please correct me.

Sounds to me like Pres Bush needs to subscribe to Bob Park's weekly email newsletter.
 
Well, if you actually build ships on the moon there's some raw materials up there. I'm not sure if it's really feasible to do it that way because you'd essentially have to build an industry from scratch on the moon.

A simpler possibility is to use nuclear rockets and dig for fuel on the moon. Most of a rocket is fuel anyway, by mass. Scout around for some uranium - it shouldn't be any rarer on the moon than on earth. I think there's also a potential fusion fuel that's supposed to be produced by solar radiation or something, can't remember if it's tritium or He3 off the top of my head.

It's a lot easier to lift stuff off the moon than it is from earth: a much lower escape velocity and no damned air. The more mass comes from the moon, the smaller your rocket will be. By a lot, actually, as you burn a whole lot of fuel just lifting the rest of your fuel...
 
Why? Because there will won't be any moon base in the foreseeable future. Bush is gonna get us to the moon (again!), and then he'll cut all funding for the program to go invade some other country under the guise of fighting 'terrorism'. He's either a fool or a con artist if he says the 'moon base' will happen during or immediately after his presidency. And he or his advisors already know this.
Click to expand...
It isn't gonna happen in four years. But hey, he will get some brownie points. Once he gets elected, then we will see what happens.
 
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