Moon or Bust

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by space_man_8_, Oct 11, 2005.

  1. space_man_8_ Registered Member

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    Hey, do you guys think that it would be feasible for the United States to send men back to the moon in the present state of affairs. I mean, theyre planning to go back before 2020, but with all of our nations money pouring into things such as the war in Iraq, the recovery, and rebuilding of hurricane torn areas after Katrina and Rita, and the present need to find alternate fuels, and energies, do you think that we would even be able to send men back to the moon any time soon, we have so many other areas to be spending our time and money?
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    My question would be why send them back for we were there 14 times already and found out alot of important things. I know there's always something new to learn there but I would rather get the ISS finished and have advanced robots exploring the moon as well as Mars and other planets. That way we don't have to spend so much money on manned flights and get alot more explorations done on alot more planets and comets. To me manned flight is to risky until we can get the speed up to over 1 million miles per hour or close to it. We are at 50,000 miles per hour now so we have a ways to go.
     
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  5. RoyLennigan Registered Senior Member

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    sending robots everywhere is good for the advancement of science, but its not going to save us if a nuclear world war breaks out, or if an asteroid hits the planet.

    i think the overall goal for the space program (and humanity), should be extraterrestrial colonization. eventually we need to get off this rock and spread ourselves out to minimize the probability of complete destruction while also maximizing diversity.
     
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  7. KitNyx Registered Senior Member

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    I agree, we must not have all of our eggs in one basket.

    - KitNyx
     
  8. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Frankly, I feel that issue is less about actually learning something about the moon and more about just figuring out how to keep humans alive in space. The more we screw around up there, the more new technology we develop and the better we get at implementing it. The final goal in my eyes is to get us off this rock alltogether and permanently. This is just practice for that last, final step.
     
  9. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    The last war was absolutely totally useless to us. If we could have afforded to do that, we could have afforded to put a colony on Mars by now.

    Here is what I think we should do. We should come up with a class of man-rated spaceships that includes the simplest but highest quality equipment we need to get the job done with a good safety margin. Find out how to cut expenses to the bone for our space hardware. There are other approaches that can work. If you had ten million dollars to build a spaceplane with, could you do it? If so, how? I think that more than nine tenths of the planned expenditures are going to be deliberate picking of the government's pocket.
     
  10. Laika Space Bitch Registered Senior Member

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    Cosmictraveler, what would you like to see the ISS finished for? Since it and the shuttle were developed simply to justify one another, I'm all for cutting our losses and ditching it. I think we could then focus on programs which actually have goals.
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Laika , You ask, "Cosmictraveler, what would you like to see the ISS finished for?"

    There were many goals with the ISS. Many countries were involved to build this research station which helped everyone learn how to work together so that just one country doesn't have to pay for the entire cost of making something this costly and to see whether or not we can all get along while building a large project as this. We will need a large vehicle to get to Mars for there needs to be ample supplies for 2 years worth of food, medicne, extra parts, a escape vehicle and on and on. That means we need something like the ISS but larger to get to Mars with. Then there's the experiments that many scientists want to use a zero gravity for. Then we must find out long duration problems with human anatomies and mental stress that will be there in a confined space.

    So you see this plus many other things is why we need to build the ISS and complete it to have a working labaratory in space for research of all different types and by many countries.
     
  12. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    The ISS was obsolete before the first element was placed in orbit. The budget cuts have generated specification cuts that have reduced the original planned range of experiments to a shadow. The shuttle problems mean that it cannot be properly supplied and manned, reducing the experimental work even further. (The shuttle was a political compromise from the outset, hence an engineering disgrace, that should never have been built.) Literally, a waste of space.
     
  13. Laika Space Bitch Registered Senior Member

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    Ophiolite... I entirely agree.

    Cosmictraveler... A beautiful notion, I agree, but not beautiful enough to justify an outlay of at least $100 billion for the American contribution alone. Mir was built for $4.3 billion and had operating costs of just 3% of the ISS.

    Between Mir, Skylab and the Salyuts, a great deal of research has been done regarding human exposure to microgravity. Of course there are more areas of interest to science, but the ISS won't be the platform that sees them studied. With the cancellation of the Crew Rescue Vehicle, the crew of the ISS is limited to three, leaving very little time for science after essential maintenance has been conducted.

    Also, a crewed expedition to Mars could be accomplished with a couple of Saturn 5 sized rockets (see Zubrin's Mars Direct plan). I believe that this is the glorious project that should be the focus of international cooperation.
     
  14. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    I repeat and rephrase my question: What can we do to MAKE a manned mission to Mars better, faster, and cheaper?
     
  15. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Follow the advice of Zubrin.

    Edit: Posted this before I noticed you had pointed out the same Laika. We also have to get around the notion that space exploration has to be safe.
    Did anybody ever compute how many inventors/experimenters/novices died in the ten years following the Wright brothers? If the US government and NASA had been in charge of developing flight we would still be flying in single engined biplanes preceded by a duck with a red flag.

    I say that not out of any disrespect for what the US has achieved in space. It's what they haven't achieved that pisses me off.
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2005
  16. guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    Who's Zubrin?

    (Yes yes, I'll get round to googling)
     
  17. Ophiolite Valued Senior Member

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    Zubrin is a visionary. He has developed a plan for a low cost (relatively) manned Mars mission, that leads to a permanent presence, by 'living off the land'. i.e generating most of the fuel for the return mission and for power on Mars from the atmosphere. It is all thoroughly viable, solid science and engineering.
    The Mars Society promotes his concepts:
    http://www.marssociety.org/
     
  18. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    The only way is to wait until the technology can get humans to Mars in less than 30 days and have a radiation shield to protect the people onboard the craft. That should be in about 50 years or so. Until then what's the big push to get a human to Mars? We can send robots there or anywhere for a fraction of the price and not worry about them at all.
     
  19. KennyJC Registered Senior Member

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    It is the significance of it, even if it is not very practical. I can see Mars from my window right now actually - It's nothing more than a faint orangish point of light... Rather different than the massive moon we can see which is rather easy to get to and feels close to home. But for man to land on a faint little point of light... I wouldn't look at Mars in the same way again after that, I think.
     
  20. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    For once I have to agree with you wholeheartedly, Ophiolite. We should have had a presence on the moon since 1975 AT THE LATEST. Most of these billions of dollars spent and projected to be spent are in my opinion sheer greed. Again, suppose we wanted to build a space bus that can haul 10 people and a year's supplies to the moon and back again, and meet the price of 10 million dollars for the entire thing, not counting boosters to launch it from Earth? How about it?
     
  21. MetaKron Registered Senior Member

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    For the moment forget my reputation for slamming people for anything and everything. How do we "wait" for the technology? There is a certain minimum number of steps between here and there. If we "wait" we will still be here when we could have been there. Technology doesn't just come along. Crazy people like me think it up, someone steals it and takes credit for it, marks up the price by 10,000 percent. Then they hire some people for as little as they pay to cut corners, produce it for next to nothing, get just enough quality in to pass inspection, then send something out that had better get to Mars in 30 days because it's only going to last a few months.

    What we're missing, in my not very humble opinion, is the kind of mindset that will sometimes use a pencil to write with in space instead of spending millions of dollars developing a pen that will write in zero G. What relatively simple direct technologies do we have that will do the job? Can we exchange some very expensive and complex boosters for much simpler ones that will do that job at a tenth of the cost and with greater reliability? Can we build a simple sturdy airframe that will do the job?
     
  22. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sorry that you think that we can get to Mars cheaply and simply for radiation will kill humans that are exposed to it for a few months if a solar flare were to erupt it would be for a few days. Technology costs money and we haven't yet developed anything to shield the crews from a high dosage of radiation that they will recieve if they are in space for 2 years going and coming home from Mars. You must realize that a very large ship will be needed to have enough room for 2 years worth of supplies as I have already pointed out. There are many things that prevent humans from going to Mars soon and these are but a few of the problems.

    Again I ask, why not just send robots for they can do the same exploration for cheap nd many of them can be sent to many places to learn more instead of putting humans on mars just because we think we need to for some stupid reasons. Robots will advance with time and will be capable of doing many more tasks when the newer ones are built and sent afar. Robots save lives, which to me is the paramount reason to use them.

    If we are going to wait for technology to get us the speeds we need to reach Mars in 30 days then use robots in the meantime. Technology will continue to find ways to increase the speeds as well as find ways to shield against radiation. We must be patient and use what we have until that time. IMHO
     
  23. Clockwood You Forgot Poland Registered Senior Member

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    Robots alone are of very little use to us out in space. They are great for getting photos and sensory data. They will probably be great for construction work. The real problem with robots is that what you learn by using them is academic and of very little use to mankind.

    We want people up there so we are forced to innovate to make it easier and more feasable for us to stay up there permanently. By batting robots around we will only get good at making space travel feasable for robots, not people. All the problems you state about human space travel are the very reasons we need to push ahead harder. If we leave things to robots, we will likely never be able to pry ourselves out of this blasted gravity well. The Earth will become our tomb, the moon a gravemarker.
     

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