Why the US has not been back to the moon?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Mind Over Matter, Jan 12, 2012.

  1. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    None the less, I think an open mind, and a blending of many epistemological frame of references will help us achieve a better understanding of reality and how it is presented to us. With this understanding, perhaps the answer to the question posed will be more obvious to one and all.
     
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  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    I blame it all on the space shuttle, so does former NASA administrator Mike Griffin[1], who quite blatantly lays out the scenario that had we only stayed with the Saturn V we would have a moon base and been to Mars already. Moral of the story is you don't drop billions of dollars of capacity and infrastructure (Saturn V) to spend billions more on theoretically better capacity (space shuttle), because theory can be horribly wrong.


    1. http://aviationweek.typepad.com/space/2007/03/human_space_exp.html
     
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  5. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    That is a long article, I only skimmed but I knew Mike Griffin from his days in the Space Department of APL/JHU and he always made good sense. I have only two faults with the whole mostly manned exploration of NASA - Why manned? & What is the value in going, to moon or Mars (or even an asteroid, not destined to smack into Earth)?

    These two basic questions need to be answered BEFORE getting too deep into the technology of how to do it.

    There is a third question too:
    Why not avoid the huge cost of taking Kgs out of Earth´s deep gravity well and exploit (developing the technology to do so) the ocean floor.* - The many deep sea vents, especially as very rich concentrations of material with commercial potential?

    Again: There is NOTHING (He3 included) which can not be found or made on Earth at a tiny fraction of the cost of bring it back to Earth from Space.

    -------------
    * It is amazing the technology oil companies have already developed. Why not let private industry do what is profitable, instead of tax payer support what is not? (Even Mike admits the shuttle and moon landings were economic disasters of little value other than US ego boost after the Russians were first with sputnik. & the reason was NOT becaused we switched from Saturn V to new technology - It was because we never answered the first two "why questions" above. ) Has the US no ability to learn from its mistakes?
     
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  7. river

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    obviously
     
  8. The Esotericist Getting the message to Garcia Valued Senior Member

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    Wow, reading this piece, I felt myself growing old, and my son having his grand children before we ever even get to Mars.

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    Aviation Week is a publication firmly in the hands of the Scientific Dictatorship. Forming beliefs or reality too dogmatically around anything they opine on WILL cause them to become reality.

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    Rockets, seriously? They want us to believe we're supposed to still be using that get to Mars a century after the Germans bombed Britain with them? Technology advances geometrically.

    Let's do a little though experiment in technology to show you how the government and monopolistic corporations CONTROL technology. (My auto-mechanic actually taught me this one) As our control, we'll use a 1957 Mustang. Now go back fifty years, to a 1907 Model T. Have there been a lot of technology improvements? You bet. What would you rather have for you basic mode of transportation? The Model T or the Mustang? Probably the Mustang. Now go forward 50 years. Next for comparison we'll use the 2007 Mustang. Go ahead, ask any auto mechanic which one he would rather have. Which one is built better, has better parts, will run better, longer, faster, and could take more of a beating, (go over open terrain, dirt roads, etc.) And how about the technology advancement comparisons? How much technology advancements in comparison in the last fifty years have occurred? The real moral of the story here, is in the magazine run by the elites, they are trying to tell you, that scientific advancement in the civil sector must now be controlled by the government and corporations so it advances only arithmetically, rather than geometrically so they can get the maximum profit out of it. How is this bad? The population of the planet is growing geometrically, and we need more technology to keep pace to ease the suffering of the people, not make the elites wealthy and powerful.


    This piece was as much about pushing a political and economic agenda as it was about establishing a strict scientific paradigm. It mentions the amount of funding going to civilian research, but makes no mention that agencies can't share technological advancements, or if they can, some advancements can't be used by the civilian space agency. If they could, perhaps we could be on the moon by the end of the decade. Or have we already been? Who knows.

    Secret Advanced Vehicles Demonstrate Technologies For Future Military Use Aviation Week & Space Technology October 1990 Multiple Sightings of Secret Aircraft Hint at New Propulsion, Airframe DesignsAviation Week & Space Technology October 1990

    Personally, I'm suspicious of Aviation Week myself, I they have some connections with the CFR and they aren't to be trusted. . . But if that is who you want to get your source from, there you go, chew on that. If that's the state of technology sighted in 1990, one can only dream of the advances that have been made since. I'll bet we could get to where we need to go a whole lot quicker, cheaper, and probably safer if the scientific dictatorship were so inclined.
     
  9. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Ah the good old "why go into space" question, well its the same as someone during the early 16th century in Spain asking why go to this new place Columbus discovered. Actually its more like someone during the 15th century in china saying yes it was good to burn the merchant fleet because there was no profit in exploring the globe and dealing with barbarians.

    As for exploring the ocean floor we have already and we mine it prestigiously, there is no reason to live underneath the ocean floor when we can live directly afloat on top of it. Living in space though with the resources of just the asteroid belt alone could support a population of trillions with a standard of living beyond anything we presently imagine, In short the oceans and ocean floor is quite finite in resources and being utilized, space could very well be infinite in resources and is not being utilized to any degree that even the oceans are.

    But in the long term I agree with you that human spaceflight is ultimately useless as technology will eventually make humans obsolete. Why colonies space with talking monkeys when we could build more ethical and intelligent beings that don't need food, air, water, pressure and mild temperatures? Because humanity has not gained a foot hold in space we have assured that we will go extincted here, because we have not developed manned spaceflight enough by the time we develop AI that smarter then us the argument to use it instead of people for space exploration and utilization will be overwhelming. Imagine sending an AI once to an asteroids and it sends back mined and processed material continuously and exponentially until it has replicated and consumed the whole asteroid belt!
     
  10. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Not at all the same. What is TOTALLY missing from your post and ideas (but carefully considered by Columbus) is an economic analysis. Columbus was able to show Queen Isabella that she could expect to gain great wealth with a small investment. (And she did, but from boat loads of new world gold, not silks.) Endeavors with highly unprofitable expectations are rarely undertaken and if some one or group is foolish enough to do so, they will soon be bankrupt.

    Columbus, knew that world was round and that it would be highly profitable to sail west and bring back silks etc. from the orient, etc. (He did not know there were the American continents blocking his way and thought the journey would be about 2000 miles.) Point is that he had reasonable expectations of great financial returns on the required investment.

    Founders of Planetary Resources, etc. are very rich and will become more so, when they sell shares in an IPO, but IPO buyers will lose everything when the corporation goes belly up. (Assuming it is not just allowed to fade away and die after becoming more realistic about how much more cheaply everything is available from Earth than from asteroids.)

    In the case of space there are NO realistic expectations of a great return on the investment - exactly the opposite is true.
    (No realistic analysis has even been attempted.)
    Again:
    There is NOTHING (He3 included) which can not be found or made on Earth at a tiny fraction* of the cost of bring it back to Earth from Space.

    *More than 10 times less cost and usually for gold etc. more than 1000 times less expensive than if brought from space.

    Again you and others need to make at least crude estimates of the cost of going to, mining on, and ore concentration for then sending back to Earth the Gold or Platinum or whatever you think could ever be competitive with earth sources.

    Also, if materials are to be used in space, not returned to Earth, then estimate how many deep space flights per year are required to just cover the capital cost of everything built in space for material collection, fuel production, fuel storage, and docking / fill up / relaunch facilities for a deep space mission etc. Even if two deep space flights per year were made they would need to pay millions of dollars for each gallon of space-made fuel bought just to cover the interest on investment costs. (Not even China can afford one deep space flight per year and usually the asteroid would not be in a useful location for the deep space flight more than once every several years!) Stop dreaming and do some thinking (economic modeling).
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2012
  11. Neverfly Banned Banned

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    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/...ration-larry-page-eric-schmidt_n_1442153.html

    I can't find the original article I read that was a lot more descriptive of the financial returns and costs.
    It's still plausible, though and I'll keep searching and see if I find a better article.
     
  12. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    This assumes that the material exists here at all.
     
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Please keep trying. Your link issued before the big promotion show in Seattle, which I heard via the internet for an hour. In it there was no reason given to suggest that they could ever get even a penny return on each dollar invested and a lot of statements that technically were not lies but were extremely misleading.

    For example: “There are trillions of dollars worth of gold and platinum in space.” – True as space is very fast; but until collected, refined from the very low grade ores, and delivered to Earth, where the buyers are, the value of all those precious metals is ZERO. Also equally as true is that there are hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold in the oceans. See data and comments in my post 29, reproduced in part below.

    For data on the fact the asteroids have much lower quality ore than precious metal mines on Earth, see this post: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2929844&postcount=6

    And comparison to commercial Earth ores, see: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2929859&postcount=8

    And for slight indication of capital cost of equipment to get precious metals from Earth ores, see:
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2929859&postcount=8

    Or in pictorial form see:
    http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2932389&postcount=35

    and then add the huge cost per pound of lifting material up out of Earth´s deep gravitational well. - You know, cheap little things like at least Saturn V sized rocket ships and newly designed mining and ore refining equipment that will fit inside their diameter and has never been tested in low gravity. Perhaps surface tension will hold the liquid precious metals to the ore oxides in the smelting furnaces instead of let it drain out of the bottom as shown in a post 35 photo. Certainly the conventional ball mills used to crush chunks of mined ore will not work in low gravity - the balls will slowly fall with too little kinetic energy to grind anything. etc.
    Quote is part of post here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2931715&postcount=29
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2012
  14. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    What very valuable material are you thinking about that is not found or cheaply made on Earth (compared to high cost of it returned from space, even just the moon)?
    Usually the ill-informed suggest He3 from the moon would be economical. If that is what you are thinking of, Read:
    From post here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2930450&postcount=21
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 20, 2012
  15. Neverfly Banned Banned

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    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162...acked-by-james-cameron-google-ceo-larry-page/
    This one is close, not sure if that's it or not...

    Feel free to tear it to shreds, as the same thing

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    Frankly, I have my doubts, too, but hey, there may be something in it...
     
  16. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I had read your link, even posted copy of the picture (an intelligent "bucket" capturing the much larger asteroid with no hint of any propulsion system etc.) There is no economics in that link - only wild claims of great potential profits (plus a understated ass covering mild admission that they may fail).

    Sure there is "something to it" - a few billions in profits for the already rich promoters (who have lots of movie and TV PR skills used in they supper slick Seattle announcement show) when the sell their stock to innocent saps in the IPO.

    That IPO will make Zuckerman´s FaceBook scam look like some kid´s lemon aid stand IPO as far as picking the pockets of saps with a good story, but very poor economics for the IPO buyers. I bet even tomorrow the FaceBook stock starts its rapid decline below the IPO price as buyers wise up to the poor economics and dump their stocks into the decline.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: May 21, 2012
  17. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    Hi, Billy T, I think you had understood everything wrong. I do know Americans were on the moon, there is no doubt about that. But the reason why I posted this is because I have a colleague who does not believe that Americans were on the moon for some reasons, sure I could get into the debate, or I should say into the fight, but I'm questioning myself, what's the point of trying to convince him that humans were on the Moon?

    Basically, I don't want to waste time on this, but somehow I feel I should "kill" the guy (I don't mean this literally, it's a figure speech) for just doubting that humans were not on the moon.
    This is why I asked if anyone has any links whatsoever so that I can prove him wrong with strong arguments and facts.
    Thanks to all.
     
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    No I did not misunderstand. Note I did not say you were a crack pot, but now that you have identified who thinks moon landing was fake, I can call your colleague a Crack Pot.
     
  19. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    I sure called that correctly. In first half hour of trading Monday AM the FB stock fell 12% from its above $38/ share close on Friday the day of the IPO to low of $33/ sh.

    Unlike Planetary Resources, when its IPO comes, Facebook does have real earning and will not fall to zero value corresponding to a company that has only hype and zero chance of ever making a profit.
     
  20. Gravage Registered Senior Member

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    Oh, sorry for misunderstanding. Well, in his defense I have to say he did say that if today's telescopes were powerful enough to see the baseball on the surface on the moon in high resolution, (which means today's telescopes were enough to see the traces of moon walking, than vehicle, flag and similar), than he would be convinced that we were on the moon. Although a crackpot, he still can be convinced unlike other crackpots.
    But I don't think there are telescopes today (yet) that can see the surface of the moon in so much detail.
    I don't understand him, it's not like we're discussing gmo.
     
    Last edited: May 22, 2012
  21. MisterSelmo Registered Member

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    Space sucks. That's why.

    Radiation, flying junk that rips holes all in your space ships... and the worst part is there's not even anything interesting to see out there. No hot alien babes, no acid-blooded death machines, nothing. We don't even have laser guns OR flying cars yet.

    The next time someone goes to the moon, it's going to be to build a Moon Hilton for the 1%.
     
  22. Neverfly Banned Banned

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    Absolute Hogwash....

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    Last edited: May 22, 2012
  23. Epictetus here & now Registered Senior Member

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    Yep, space is a vacuum, and vacuums tend to do that.

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