After moon, where should NASA go?

[Syzygys]

..could not the same be said about the colonisation of America?Was there anything in America at the time which could not be had in Europe at a fraction of the cost?

Potato, tomato, tobacco,etc.

Read your freaking history books!!! Not to mention, the effort and price of a trip to America was WAY smaller than colonizing the Moon, remember the Vikings did it too, with their inflatable boats...

Read your freaking history books, but I already said that....

not to mention they were looking for a faster way to the East, they were discovering the unknown. (so the analogy fails on so many levels)There is nothing interesting or unknown on the Moon..

 

[Billy T]

Yeah well in that other reply you did not care to mention it.

You seem to obstruct any idea of space being useful for humankind.

Well guess what even if there was no Helium-3, it is always will be in our best interest to spread to space and use the resources there (even under false pretenses) as a driving force to expand our civilization.

No, I don't obstruct idea that space is useful for humankind. I only want to be intelligent and economical how we explore and exploit it - not sending man there, at least not for a long time, ONLY to impress other nations, like some APE beating on its own chest. (Good analogy as that activity hurts the ape or nation performing it.)

Certainly near earth orbits are very valuable (GPS etc.) Stationary Orbits are so valuable for communication that they are rationed. (One pacific island nation has a UN granted right to one slot and rents it to others as its main source of foreign exchange!) I have even suggested some years ago that the back side of the Moon is very useful as an astronomy base and told how it could operate in a few decades. See, in this thread my reply to post 43 at:

http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2327589&postcount=46

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On He3, I cannot mention all points I make in every post - My post tend to be long as it is as I try to be accurate and that requires some details.

I have told two current reasons why He3 is not worth bringing to Earth, and probably never will be. One can postulate changes in current facts for most anything -For example postulate solar flux steady for 14 day makes a chemical compound on moon's surface that cures any cancer in a week with only a 1 gm single does. I don't mention that possible cargo to return in each post either. CURRENTLY I have given NOT ONLY two given reasons why not economical to bring He3 from moon to earth, but also explained why IMHO, it is highly unlikely to be there except in minute, quantities, again for physics reasons I have discussed.

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I think tricking the tax payers to spend their money with false claims is a bad idea, especially when there are so many serious un- meet needs on earth.
I have mentioned that there is no NDEA (National Disease Eradication Agency), which would aid humankind 1000 times more at half the cost of NASA.

I'll tell why I was invited to testify before Congress (but declined) back when the formation of NASA was being considered:

Back then to win popular support the Pro-NASA congressmen, expecting to get lots of dollars for their states & districts were explaining how in gravity free space "perfect ball bearings" could be made with ease. LBJ even pointed that falsehood out as I recall - it is not by chance that NASA's main center is in Texas.

I wrote to one of the Anti-NASA congressmen a letter pointing out that when metal liquids solidify they crystallize. These crystals have a different volume than the liquid that made them. So the radius of curvature of the still liquid metal is constantly changing as solidification proceeds. In fact, the ball bearing made in space would be rejected even by the lowest standards for any commercial ball bearings as much too much out of round to be used for anything. After my letter, the talk of "perfect ball bearings" as a reason for NASA died down in a few months.

Unfortunately, after the Russian Ape had beaten its chest so loudly that all the world heard sputnik’s feeble beeps, the US ape had to quickly hurt its self and create NASA in response. You want to continue this silliness with tax dollars in manned space efforts instead of advance AI and explore and exploit space via instruments? Let private industry take man into near space and PAY taxes instead, if there is gain to be made by that. There seems to be. See post about Virgin Galactic already getting 40 million dollars in advanced deposits for 300 places in the line to quick orbit the earth and 280 million for a ~1/3 of the company at:
http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2324865&postcount=18

We already have far too much self serving dis-honest pork coming from congress without some new and unneeded program for NASA. Sent it home. Even forget they and accidently killed by bad design an entire crew and stupidly killed three in a launch pad fire due to use of pure O2 even after the Russians had warned of the danger etc. Just "bite tongue," while saying: “Thank you for job well done.”

AFAIK Russia has not killed anyone in one of their space ships and has had few, (or none?), fail to go into orbit as planned. They had a more cautious program. (Sent both dog and monkey into space before man; used only air, not O2, in the cabins, etc.)

 

[Billy T]

...Of course they aren't going to let classified material to the public, even to your "insiders."...

Yes that is 150% correct. I have it from an "insider friend" that US first used torture on that Roswell UFO crash survivor until he told how to make anti-gravity machine. That is being suppressed both for national security reasons an also because airline companies are already going bankrupt and if their planes lost all their value then the banks that financed them would go belly up too.

Take my advice don't ever mention these facts again. The CIA still knows how to disappear anyone it likes.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Self-confessed? Do provide that link.

I'll find it.
I thought I had the document on my hard drive, but if I do it's lost in the general clutter.

Of course they aren't going to let classified material to the public, even to your "insiders."

Not even when my insiders worked on the thing (I never mentioned general public)?
Wow, that IS secret.

 

[Billy T]

...Was there anything in America at the time which could not be had in Europe at a fraction of the cost?...

Yes gold by the Spanish galleons boat loads, available just for the killing of the native wearing it. This was known long before there was much interest in N. America

Columbus was NOT sailing west to discover a new world. The queen of Spain would not pay for that, but to find a cheaper, shorter rout to the known riches of Asia. Marco Polo had brought back proof that they existed and then the merchants of Venus were getting rich by going around the Southern tip of Africa. Isabel, wanted a shorter more profitable way to the East.

Interestingly Columbus died believing he had found it. – He never realized that "the new world” existed*. – He thought he had found a poor part of Asia.
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*Possibly he knew, but had to keep telling the Queen he found the way to Asia so she would pay for his 2nd & final trips.

 

[sentrynox]

The question is not where we should go, but rather how we can reach the places we want to go!
Space travels can have a lot of perspectives to it, and shuttles or rockets are just very primitive concepts compare to the other potential avenues not yet thinkered over by our scientific community.
Actually the main hurdle to space exploration at the moment is the energy generation, which determined how fast we can reach a place and also how much prepared we can be in order to face all possibilities on the way to the place we want to go.
So in a way, we need to find a better source of energy if we are to be serious about exploring space. Also, I am not sure that it is wise to blast rockets in space every time we want to reach it!
Its like a swimmer that swim at 100m deep, holding his breath and needing to go at the surface every 6 minutes and return at 100m down... I mean thats not the way it should be done at all!!
I fear the Nasa should really put more energy on space elevators technology so they could reach space in a much more efficient fashion, then our solar system will be readily accessible, but not before that, will we really get a shot at REALLY exploring our Universe.

As for the other means of exploring our Universe, those technologies do not involve physical travel, but rather energy travel, which goes in line with Einstein theory of relativity... Thats the most efficient way of traveling in space, and I can tell you, that we aren't that far of making it...
Because with energy travel, we can copy the energy signature taken somewhere else and reproduce it here without loss, and without physically traveling there.
So in essence it looks more like a virtual teleportation than a real space travel. As for resources extraction, I said, if you can reproduce energy from another place, then you can also use energy to transform matter into what you need... But we are more far away of this than the other!

 

[sentrynox]

"The TAW-50 is a hypersonic, anti-gravity space fighter-bomber" Makes for excellent reading even if you do belong to the cult of "no." lol[/QUOTE]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but this isn't anything close to what the US black project have in stocks right now.
The most powerful laser in the universe is based on plasma, not nucleonic garbage... Actually, in theory you could use up the energy of the sun to create a laser strong enough to blow another star, just because the sun is also a plasma... So you know what kind of power such laser can have. Actually those lasers are in the range of x-rays and even maybe gamma and take the space of a small room to use.

But the Air force has other pretty nice projects in the air, but since they are about 30 years ahead of what we know...

 

[Captain Kremmen]

The question is not where we should go, but rather how we can reach the places we want to go!

Erm, no.
The question is "After Moon, where should Nasa go?"

 

[EndLightEnd]

Mars seems like the most logical step.

 

[weed_eater_guy]

Actually, sentrynox is kinda right; improvements in launch systems, propulsion and power plants would be a good if not required first step to our next foray, probably Mars. With more advanced launch systems (air-breathing systems, a space elevator, etc.) raising the kind of bulk material needed for infrastructure becomes much cheaper. With more efficient-yet-powerful engine and powerplant combinations, spacecraft can be flown with smaller mass-fractions of fuel.

All this allows for moving beyond our current mindset of spacecraft design. At the moment, because it's so freaking expensive to launch mass into space, and that mass has alot of responsibility (providing an atmosphere for people to live in space, protecting against radiation, reentry, etc.), the trend is to use small, flimsy pieces if incredibly well-engineered components to build our vehicles.

However, if we can cheaply get bulk material into space, a mars vehicle wouldn't have to be a flimsy collection of pressure vessels that the ISS is, it could be built more like a nuclear submarine if we really wanted. Heavy metal skin, ultra-robust and redundant onboard systems, a powerplant and engine that can move it all, and you have a vehicle that isn't just designed to barely accomplish a mission with the least mass possible, you have a vehicle that is a proper, reusable, tough-as-nails space vehicle.

 

[sentrynox]

Erm, no.
The question is "After Moon, where should Nasa go?"

I just answer a derivative of its question that needs to be answered before the whole...
Nothing wrong here!

 

[Dywyddyr]

The most powerful laser in the universe is based on plasma, not nucleonic garbage...

Nonsense.

But the Air force has other pretty nice projects in the air, but since they are about 30 years ahead of what we know...

Also nonsense.

 

[sentrynox]

Nonsense.


Also nonsense.

Wow, what kind of arguments are those?
Plasma lasers are off record and you won't find them in wikipedias

US black projects have the black Manta plane, which is neat if you know a little about it... They also have another project that looks like a triangle and use electromagnetic fields to displace air volumes around it!

As for nonsense, I am not well acquainted with English language, but it seems inappropriate when it is about contesting someone credibility, and not the meaning of something:shrug:

 

[Dywyddyr]

Wow, what kind of arguments are those?
Plasma lasers are off record and you won't find them in wikipedias

Then you can't back up your contention.
And I don't just look in Wiki.
Higher than the NOVA (1.25 Petawatts)?
(Although I should point out that since this thread is speculating about us travelling in space the phrase "most powerful laser in the universe" is sort of ignoring any other races that might be out there. "On Earth, possibly).

US black projects have the black Manta plane, which is neat if you know a little about it...

More than a little.

They also have another project that looks like a triangle and use electromagnetic fields to displace air volumes around it!

Yup, project - an idea for something they want to build.
If they can get it to work.
Rolls-Royce were trying something of that sort back in the 1970s...

As for nonsense, I am not well acquainted with English language, but it seems inappropriate when it is about contesting someone credibility, and not the meaning of something:shrug:

Your statement "but since they are about 30 years ahead of what we know... " assumes too much.
Who is the "we" you're referring to? Bearing in mind my posts #64 and 56.

And FYI my information comes from aerospace insiders and my own experience in that field.

even when my insiders worked on the thing

 

[PieAreSquared]

billy t...
I think tricking the tax payers to spend their money with false claims is a bad idea, especially when there are so many serious un- meet needs on earth.


exactly

 

[sentrynox]

To Dywyddyr

Nonsense.


Also nonsense.

A little more details about available advance weaponry that could interest you...

The plasma laser, originate from a team at Michigan University that devise the proof of concept and which results were published in December 1992.

The laser goes across a plasma which generates series of modulating shockwaves that amplify the beam.

Their first prototype could produce 55tW in a fraction of a picosecond. Their next goal was to produce a laser beam of 1000tW of power, but that one have never been published in so far...
They were hoping to use this technique to generate X-ray laser beams. And this is over 15 years ago...

But another weapon of Universal destruction is also existing, it was develop during the Star Wars program, but cost ran too high, (as they say). Its a derivative from the Excalibur program... It is called the NPB, but the Russians call it the Elipton (as indirectly refer to by Vladimir Jirinovski in its speech in Vienna, Austria of the 21 December 1993)

NPB (for Neutral Particle Beam)
If you want to know more about the neutral particle beam, then you must know that charged particles beam have an electric charge that can interact with itself by repulsing its own particles, which limits its effectiveness and its range. Also such charged particle beams are influence by our planet magnetic field in a way that cannot be predicted.

Therefore only neutral particle beams can travel without interacting too much with its environment thus keeping its effectiveness much longer than other kinds of beams. So such beam could travel easily through our atmosphere and space.

As for common lasers, they do not work well inside our atmosphere because their radiations tend to ionized the surrounding atmosphere after reaching a certain energetic threshold thus causing molecular ionization and air conductivity that triggers "slamming" phenomenons that destroy the laser beam over certain range.

The problem for such NPB is that it is hard to produce as only charged particle beams can be accelerated inside a magnetic field, so the technique at creating such beam consist at "photoneutralizing" them by making the beam going through a laser cavity.

The Los Alamos Laboratory as well as McDonnell Douglas Aeronautics have worked on such beams.
What makes them so powerful is that they are the perfect way to deliver energy to matter, so a very nicely focused beam of a NPB, could potentially destroyed everything in its path, including a star...

For the matter some of the information above can be found in Science et Vie mag:917, February 1994, page 50... But it is in French...

 

[sentrynox]

Then you can't back up your contention.
And I don't just look in Wiki.
Higher than the NOVA (1.25 Petawatts)?
(Although I should point out that since this thread is speculating about us travelling in space the phrase "most powerful laser in the universe" is sort of ignoring any other races that might be out there. "On Earth, possibly).

Yup, project - an idea for something they want to build.
If they can get it to work.
Rolls-Royce were trying something of that sort back in the 1970s...

Your statement "but since they are about 30 years ahead of what we know... " assumes too much.
Who is the "we" you're referring to? Bearing in mind my posts #64 and 56.

Well, I must admit that it will be the most indirectly powerful laser in the Universe... Do you know about Quasar (the stellar bodies)? But I can't tell much more here...

I have not seen it personally, but it seems it works pretty well, and fast too!!

I agree that I should have specified 30 years ahead in some fields, not all. To give you an example, Tesla did work on things that aren't even yet available on the market today and this is over 50 years ago... Of course the FBI harvest ALL of his works after his death!!!

The "WE" is the current international market. Of course it takes a while to standardize new technology, many won't EVER make it to the surface...

 

[Billy T]

To sentrynox

You clearly know something about very high power lasers, and I am sure know the difference between it power and the energy it delivers, but your post easily mis-lead those who do not.

As far as weapon is concerned, it normally is the energy delivered on target that counts. For this the gas dynamic lasers are much better than the very high power extremely short pulse lasers you are describing. Unfortunate, back when I had access to secret information, including movies of their field trial, the both from the ground and a special high altitude plane they were barely able to deliver enough ENERGY on target to destroy it AND presented great risk to the users as the gases were very toxic. I had some direct contact with a laboratory HCN laser and scared the s--t out of me. Cyanide is not nice to work with.

 

[Dywyddyr]

A little more details about available advance weaponry that could interest you...

It's devised as a weapon?
Hmm I must remonstrate with my sources...

Their first prototype could produce 55tW in a fraction of a picosecond. Their next goal was to produce a laser beam of 1000tW of power, but that one have never been published in so far...

Just under NOVA.

But another weapon of Universal destruction is also existing, it was develop during the Star Wars program, but cost ran too high, (as they say). Its a derivative from the Excalibur program... It is called the NPB, but the Russians call it the Elipton (as indirectly refer to by Vladimir Jirinovski in its speech in Vienna, Austria of the 21 December 1993)

NPBs aren't usually classed as lasers.

As for common lasers, they do not work well inside our atmosphere because their radiations tend to ionized the surrounding atmosphere after reaching a certain energetic threshold thus causing molecular ionization and air conductivity that triggers "slamming" phenomenons that destroy the laser beam over certain range.

And thermal blooming.
A US/ German study gives a power loss of ~30% per mile of atmosphere penetrated at sea level for weaponised free-electron lasers.

For the matter some of the information above can be found in Science et Vie mag:917, February 1994, page 50... But it is in French...

I'll see if I can get hold of a copy.
The only issue I have is 4 years older than that.

I agree that I should have specified 30 years ahead in some fields, not all. To give you an example, Tesla did work on things that aren't even yet available on the market today and this is over 50 years ago...

A large number of which were totally unworkable.

Of course the FBI harvest ALL of his works after his death!!!

And returned them later...

 

[sentrynox]

To sentrynox

You clearly know something about very high power lasers, and I am sure know the difference between it power and the energy it delivers, but your post easily mis-lead those who do not.

As far as weapon is concerned, it normally is the energy delivered on target that counts. For this the gas dynamic lasers are much better than the very high power extremely short pulse lasers you are describing. Unfortunate, back when I had access to secret information, including movies of their field trial, the both from the ground and a special high altitude plane they were barely able to deliver enough ENERGY on target to destroy it AND presented great risk to the users as the gases were very toxic. I had some direct contact with a laboratory HCN laser and scared the s--t out of me. Cyanide is not nice to work with.

Your are right!! Sorry if I mislead peoples, I mainly write things when working on my project which means that it is written for me to understand, as for the others...:m:
You are right about gas lasers, but what if a pulse laser could generate a dynamic laser?? But I agree that it is all on paper so far as I know...
Chemical lasers are not really stable for battlefield applications even if they have tremendous efficiency, they are too much vulnerable to atmospheric variations, which will occur certainly more often during a fight than during a testing!