NASA rules out manned Moon mission in the foreseeable future
76 replies, posted
But but but
[t]http://i.imgur.com/dt2oVud.jpg[/t]
Astronauts
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]You must be awfully naive and are completely avoiding some of my points. First of all, do you really think that out of the 100 billion stars in our galaxy with even more planets, that there is not life that poses a threat to us? Obviously this sounds Sci-Fi due the the fact that companies have farmed the idea of extraterrestrial life so much in their products, but if we don't let that influence our minds we can see that the probability is fairly high. If you were going somewhere that had very little water, and was a 70% chance there was going to be no rain, I would buy some water wouldn't you? Rather than risk dying from dehydration, I bought the water. [/QUOTE]
If you think contact with alien life is more likely than winning the lottery, let alone anything more significant than bacteria or ancient ruins, [url=http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/aliens.php#id--Apes_or_Angels]you haven't done your homework[/url]. If you told a body of scientists that we need to expand into space so we can be ready in case there are hostile aliens we need to fight, you'd be laughed out of the room.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]That is the same idea applies here, I would rather have the nuclear arsenal rather than die from inter stellar warfare (again, don't let opinion bias you, look at the high chance of a threatening life). [/QUOTE]
The chance of us exterminating ourselves with such weapons is infinitely higher than the chance of them being used against aliens.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]And "useful resources like those used in nuclear weapons" how do you not see what I mean? I mean things such as plutonium, uranium, etc. You simply cannot find enough of that on earth to have sufficient protection from any threatening life. [/QUOTE]
Tell me where in the solar system (or, I'll be generous, local cluster) we can find such materials. Show me reports indicating their presence on other planets.
You seem to not realize that as far as resources go, Earth is pretty much perfect. Most star systems, even if they contain planets, only have gas giants or inert and largely useless rock. You won't find planets made entirely of precious metals, because heavier elements are retained in the star that formed them.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]Also, you avoided what I am saying on He3, I am saying we do it as a [B]side project[/B] along side space ship construction, if we are doing a full scale facility on the moon we might as well process some regolith to get some valuable energy. I can't imagine it would up the cost much at all. [/QUOTE]
No, I'm sure it wouldn't cost much to set up a mining operation capable of processing millions of tons of rock and extracting trace elements from them. Probably only the GDP of most of Europe for a few decades. Chump change.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]Also, I don't think you understand what we would do with overpopulation. We wouldn't go on the sea floor, we would build upwards into the sky before that, since that would be much cheaper, its the fact that we will run out of space and resources to create more space, we will need to have control of extra terrestrial planets or moons to get more resources for the over population, the sooner we do that the better and more stable it will be. [/QUOTE]
The bottom of the ocean is far easier to get to, far less hostile, and far cheaper to develop in than anywhere in space. When an average person, naked, costs 3.5 million dollars in payload just to get into space (let alone anywhere from orbit), we're going to make sure the Earth's space is completely exhausted before we move upwards.
[QUOTE=supersoldier58;40202132]And how do you suppose we do that research without testing? How do you suppose we find out the effects of 1/6 G without testing, we could build that lovely and convenient spinning space station, or we you start a lunar facility that could be used after testing, and start a basis for future space endeavors. And the people that have the space ships, the territory, and the very existent resources are the ones that will be successful and have a good grip on the future world. We need to plan ahead for future success, instead of just doing things as we go along.[/QUOTE]
'Just doing things as we go along' is the perfect description for space exploration without any clear goals or return on the investment. None of the technologies that would be developed in the course of a space program cannot be developed locally.
Are you familiar with the 1848 gold rush? Take a look at who got rich from it. It wasn't the miners, it was the shopkeepers who sold them their equipment. And you haven't even shown that there's 'gold' out there to begin with.
[QUOTE=BrainDeath;40195313]how do astronauts on planets constitute "progress"?[/QUOTE]
Doing something we couldn't do before is the definition of progress. We can't send astronauts to space right now, but once we learn to, it'll be progress
[QUOTE=Laserbeams;40205957]Doing something we couldn't do before is the definition of progress. We can't send astronauts to space right now, but once we learn to, it'll be progress[/QUOTE]
I'd say progress is what you learn from it. If you do something new but take nothing useful away, you haven't made any progress, just expended effort. Any future space missions will need to have clear, sustainable, worthwhile goals to justify the investment- one-upping the Soviets with vague promises of military applications isn't enough anymore.
[QUOTE=hypno-toad;40195204]It's not "why could," it's "why would."
Sending people into space just isn't practical at the moment. It doesn't yield much information that couldn't be gathered by unmanned probes. Vanity like sending people to the moon/mars is going to be the [I]death[/I] of space exploration, it's negligently impractical, incredibly expensive and until there's actual life-supporting foothold infrastructure on the moon/mars there's no reason to actually go to them.
I'd much rather see far more ambitious unmanned missions to actually build infrastructure on the moon, rather than just having to witness this circlejerk of sending people to the moon to bounce around on camera for a few days. The only problem is there's so many people who just don't give a shit about science or practical space exploration and would rather just see people launched into space for the sake of appearances.[/QUOTE]
true, but without all this vanity and appearances how are you going to raise money for the space program? thats the stuff which inspires people
I think what most people seem to be missing here is the insane amount of money that can be made from asteroid mining. Obviously it would require a large initial investment but asteroids have billions, even trillion of dollars in raw materials. Not only could they be mined and used for future space projects, but also they could be shipped back to Earth.
Such a project would be much more efficient with a sort of base on the moon. I think a manned moon mission would only be useful in combination with, or sometime after, an asteroid mining mission.
[QUOTE=Mooman;40207834]I think what most people seem to be missing here is the insane amount of money that can be made from asteroid mining. Obviously it would require a large initial investment but asteroids have billions, even trillion of dollars in raw materials. Not only could they be mined and used for future space projects, but also they could be shipped back to Earth.[/QUOTE]
There's undoubtedly a lot of useful material in asteroids, the problem is getting to it. There have been a few proposed mining projects, but the amount of infrastructure in space needed to get to the asteroid, harvest it, and then return the material to Earth somehow (not to mention then get it to the ground, or transfer to a depot in orbit) is obscene.
In fact, there's a 300-meter asteroid identified by NASA's WISE telescope sitting in Earth's L4 Lagrangian point, which would be about as easy to get to as the moon, so doable with modern technology. The question is whether it's worth the cost.
[QUOTE=Mooman;40207834]Such a project would be much more efficient with a sort of base on the moon. I think a manned moon mission would only be useful in combination with, or sometime after, an asteroid mining mission.[/QUOTE]
A lot of people understandably gloss over some of the concepts in orbital mechanics, but basically, unlike with a car and driving somewhere, just because there's something along your path doesn't mean you can stop there, especially with interplanetary missions.
Basically, if a ship is coming in from the asteroid belt to Earth orbit, it would probably calculate its Hohmann transfer to include an aerobrake at Earth, slowing it down by skimming the atmosphere and putting it into a stable orbit without expending any fuel. Well, the moon has pretty much no atmosphere, which means that instead of just ending at Earth, you'd need to burn to get into moon orbit, land (also costly), take off again, and then transfer orbit to Earth, all in all costing a whole lot more fuel than if you just did a straight shot to Earth.
Aside from the questionable He3 harvesting angle, there aren't all that many reasons to put a colony on the moon as opposed to in Earth orbit. Low Earth orbit is a lot easier to get to and is the same basic environment.
[QUOTE=Used Car Salesman;40195140]Uh huh. I am completely out of faith in NASA's ability to set, stick to, and accomplish goals in their manned program. If we EVER see people on the Moon or Mars in our lifetimes, they won't have the NASA logo on their spacecraft.[/QUOTE]
It's not NASA's problem, its politicians, if NASA was funded by the private sector and could get a steady budget instead of a cut every fucking year, they could easily run a manned space program, its just politicians fuck with them, NASA gets less than 1% of the federal budget, if it only got 3% of the budget we would have moon bases
[QUOTE=Durrsly;40196955]You know what would kick ass.
NASA creating a Kickstarter project for a moon mission.[/QUOTE]
Donate 100million$ and go there with them!
Not saying private sector could fund NASA, but look at how much money a few ex NASA employees raised to fund the NASA outreach programs after they got axed
[QUOTE=catbarf;40208506]
A lot of people understandably gloss over some of the concepts in orbital mechanics, but basically, unlike with a car and driving somewhere, just because there's something along your path doesn't mean you can stop there, especially with interplanetary missions.
Basically, if a ship is coming in from the asteroid belt to Earth orbit, it would probably calculate its Hohmann transfer to include an aerobrake at Earth, slowing it down by skimming the atmosphere and putting it into a stable orbit without expending any fuel. Well, the moon has pretty much no atmosphere, which means that instead of just ending at Earth, you'd need to burn to get into moon orbit, land (also costly), take off again, and then transfer orbit to Earth, all in all costing a whole lot more fuel than if you just did a straight shot to Earth.
Aside from the questionable He3 harvesting angle, there aren't all that many reasons to put a colony on the moon as opposed to in Earth orbit. Low Earth orbit is a lot easier to get to and is the same basic environment.[/QUOTE]
Good point, I forgot about the whole getting into earth orbit without expending fuel thing.
A larger space station/dock orbiting the Earth is probably a much better first step than going directly to the moon; less infrastructure required
[QUOTE=Kljunas;40195211]Why would they send people on the moon again anyway?[/QUOTE]
we could gather moon ore?
[QUOTE=Ybbat;40201172]With the Economists from Facepunch, and their sub High School educations, I can't believe no one realized that increasing public spending actually increased the GDP of a country. Who would have fucking known?[/QUOTE]
Well depending on the method of calculating GDP, public sector spending is often included in the GDP so yeah most people should know that anyways. Unless you're implying that public spending can cause private sector growth, because that is not always true.
Something happened on the moon I bet, something terrible...
Cool as space is, there's really no reason to visit the moon.
It's a rock. That's about it.
We can't mine it, that'll fuck with the tides n shit if we mine too much.
We can't live on it, there's no reason to. No resources, nothing to research nothing to do (other than study the effects of lowgrav)
The moons pretty useless to colonize at the moment. I'd say mars is a better option to colonize because it gives us practice for doing it on other, more distant planets.
[QUOTE=Empty_Shadow;40216002]Cool as space is, there's really no reason to visit the moon.
It's a rock. That's about it.
We can't mine it, that'll fuck with the tides n shit if we mine too much.
We can't live on it, there's no reason to. No resources, nothing to research nothing to do (other than study the effects of lowgrav)
The moons pretty useless to colonize at the moment. I'd say mars is a better option to colonize because it gives us practice for doing it on other, more distant planets.[/QUOTE]
the act of setting up the infrastructure for prolonged missions expands our engineering frontiers. you need new ways to preserve and grow food. you need more efficient ways to get materials to the astronauts. you need new methods to keep astronauts fit to prevent bone and muscle loss. you need long term life support systems. you need to find a way to assemble a base on a foreign body.
the actual benefits from being on the moon are outweighed by the benefits you gleam from just trying to get there.
not to mention a lunar base could serve as a refueling station for longer range missions. getting past earth's atmosphere and gravity is where most of our fuel is spent in space missions. if we can load less fuel onto an ascent vehicle, then let the ship refuel at the moon(where escaping gravity is p. easy), then you could send manned ships out way farther, way faster.
[editline]9th April 2013[/editline]
also the coolness aspect of it is too big to ignore. we are boldly going where no humans have ever gone before.
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