Back To The Moon In 2020?

I can't either see a manned mars happening or the moon happening again without a economic drive or a semseble reason to go there.
If they yust wan't to learn how to life of the land then they should train in antartica.
Space is a risky busniss if Bush wan'ts to launch himself to Mars then I happly make a donation, if he likes to send some astronauts sure why not but uncle sam is paying.

The problem with mannend space flight is, that it absolutley useless and has no reasons other then PR.
Without goals on the land what's the reason to go there in the first place?

 

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Going to space is not useless, in fact it is the first priority for humans, it will allow greater chance of survival for the civilization. But mainly it will allow the population to sustain itself at its present rate of increase and also solve inderectly the issues coming from Earth on greenhouse effect, uv light from ozone depletion, and such.

 

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Bullshit, Bullshit, and more bullshit.

 

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Let's see. If we make it back to the moon again by 2020 (doubtful, very doubtful). Then it will have been almost 50 fifty years since we last visited there. Based on future wars and etc., that means Mars will take probably another 50 years (if we're lucky, real lucky) to get there. I still bet my money on China and Russia getting to Mars first and establishing a scientific base for research.

 

Drivel.

Current population growth is c.1%.
That's a mere 60 million net NEW people a year.
(After the recent major Tsunami, it took just 3 days for the population to recover to prior Tsunami levels!)

So - for the population "to sustain itself at its present rate of increase" are you proposing to ship 60 million people PER YEAR off the planet?

Given that a shuttle to low-earth orbit could probably hold, say about 40 people - if adusted to be purely a people-carrier - then this would take 1.5m launches a year - just to L.E.O.
That's a tad over 4,000 launches a day.
Then there's the requirement for the fuel to ship them from L.E.O. to wherever it is this 60m people are destined for!

As you can see - colonisation, even on the mass scale you assume / dream, is NOT going to solve anything - especially not the overcrowding that is feared.
Can you seriously see 60m people A YEAR vacating the earth?

Even if we had a STARGATE (i.e. instant travel to another planet) - and people jumped through at the rate of 1 per second - this would take... 60m seconds = 694 days = 1.9 years - and by then the population would have gone up 60m DESPITE the colonising.

 

Apearently it's boring to wait in line for 2 years.

I'm not saiying it's completley useless to visit the moon altough it means delaying mars for a other couple of decennia. They have to do something interesting while they are there. During the Apollo era they took almost all pilots to the moon, I believe during all the moonlanding only 1 scientist (a geolist[guy studying rocks]) was ever sent there.
They should send some engineers witch they proberly wont. And do something interesting while they are there for a 180 days. Make a dome where they can grow there own food, so that they can stay there for even longer. Perhaps try out a magnetic force field to keep the radiation away. Mine some minerals for profits. More then yust land there drive around take pictures and monitore their own boneloss

 

Why? What in hell for? For Christ's sake, give ME the bloody money. I could use some new sequencers. What are they possibly going to learn now they didn't already bloody know?

I have a better idea. Give the money to me, and I'll put it to good use. Then, when the Russians and Chinese get there first, we can sit back and have a good laugh at the stupid arses who wasted their billions on pie-in-the-sky nonsense when their people were starving. Or use it to develop some new space-travel technologies.

 

For crying out loud, Orcot. Do you have any idea how much more information could have been gathered by humans on site than the robots have gathered? It's entirely lame.

Wars should be regarded as expensive and manned space flight should be regarded as cheap at twice the price.

 

And it not only takes about 4 percent of the energy to launch a load from the moon, we also get the economy of not having to launch so much fuel to push fuel. That's the difference between a rocket that is about half payload and a rocket that is about two percent payload.

 

In my view, the best strategy for a Mars colonization would be to send, in advance, lots of the materials that would be needed. Construction materials, rovers, water, etc. Have it all cached, via un-manned trips, so that when people do get there, they will have all the comforts of home, and the ability to stay for years (until they get homesick). The recent find of flowing liquid water (see other Astronomy thread on that topic) should also be an indication that we should scout out that area, and other possible flowing water areas, to see if we can't develop a natural reservoir of water on Mars, which could be placed into large storage tanks to await the first colonists/explorers. All that can be done via unmanned rovers, etc.

While the above-described work is ongoing, we can be practicing with a moon colonization. That keeps the industrial program for rocket flight and manned flight primed, so that it can be readily turned to Mars when we're ready.

And, why not get China/Russia/Europe to work with us on it?

 

You just paraphrased NASA's plans for sending humans to Mars (with the exception of getting China to work with us on it).

 

we're going to the moon, it's inevitable. rocketry technology and logistics get better every month, and we're bound to see new methods of getting to space soon, wether it be scramjets, a space elevator, or something we havn't thought of yet. but yeah, the moon is the first stop, cause if you have a permanent presence on the moon, you can construct vehicles, satilites and space station components from lunar ore, and accelerating them to the 1.8km/s lunar orbit with no atmospheric interference is a hell of alot easier than accelerating things to 8 km/s with a 100km atmosphere in the way to make an earth launch. Building a martian-orbit transit vehicle would be alot easier if it were created an launched from the moon than if it were hurdled off of the earth, cause then the vehicle could be bulkier (no air to slip through means cross-sectional area isn't a problem), it could be built as a single vehicle rather than a bunch of pieces "snapped" together like the way any space station is or has been built (less design inefficiency, more robust systems, etc.), the engines would only need to operate in vacuum (so they could be optimized for such), and all that would need to be made on earth would be sensitive components and probably the martian lander (needs aerodynamic systems too complicated to be created at an early lunar base). Most of the structure of such a martian craft could be built right on the lunar surface using lunar materials, probably with the same refining and metal-working systems used to make a permanent settlement in the first place!

 

Not a big difference, here's Kennedy speaking in September of '62. So he proposed to go to the moon within about seven years, v/s thirteen:

Now that's inspiring. That's a guy who means what he says and understands the importance of space. I have no such faith in this current "goal".

 

Yea, I agree with you on that one.

 

Well I do have a goal. I will do anything to reach that goal as fast as I can.

 

Only a person with a cowboy attitude would say something like this any other person would first take the ball before running of to the goal.
Getting to the moon should be a obstacle not the goal

They generally eat less recruire no critical life support and they don't want something fancy like a return ticket.
And for their abilities for example: spirit has a total mass of 1,063 kg (2,343 lb) wikipedia this includes heath shield parachute propelent, etc
The original lunar lander weigted 32,399 lb 14,696 kg and if you like to be faire you have to add the service module witch add Total: 66,871 lb 30,332 kg
So you get 45000 kg (without a calculator).
Do you think that a mars rover 40 times it size wreally couldn't compete with a human?

 

Offcourse going there could be fun to watch, and beeting the Russians will give some satisfaction. Basicley there isn't enof data yet avaible to properly rate this mission. And my posts where a little harsh perhaps. I yust hoped that there would have been a little more study on the lunar habitat where the actual work is going to happen, NASA should already know how to set a man on the moon

 

My goal is not Moon, my goal is Mars. And yes moon is obstacle to my goal...

 

When Kennedy said that we were going to the moon, unlike Shrub he wasn't lying.

 

I want to go.