OT/ We Choose The Moon

[CaptSopwith 22]

I know this is a tad more modern than our canvas and wooden planes but...

 

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, the JFK library put together a truly remarkable website about the mission. It's all flash based and streams the radio transmissions between Houston and Apollo 11 through all stages of the mission. On July 20th they streamed the mission in real time but now the entire mission is archived and you can access all of it whenever you want.

 

There are few websites I'd actually recommend, and even fewer that have truly wowed me over the years. This is one of them. For anyone who loves history and the history of manned flight, you should check it out. I spent hours there.

 

http://wechoosethemoon.org/

[HomeBoy 1]

Wow! This is truly remarkable. Thanks for that CS!

[Hasse Wind 46]

That is truly a fantastic website, obviously even more so if you are interested in the history of space exploration.

 

Too bad decades have been wasted without achieving anything as great as the Apollo program. It's kind of sad to read about the visions people had back then about what we would be doing in space in the 21st century. No mission to the Mars, not even to the Moon...

[BigJim 0]

That is truly a fantastic website, obviously even more so if you are interested in the history of space exploration.

 

Too bad decades have been wasted without achieving anything as great as the Apollo program. It's kind of sad to read about the visions people had back then about what we would be doing in space in the 21st century. No mission to the Mars, not even to the Moon...

Ouch we here in Arizona were quite proud of our kids that did the unmanned landing and exploration of Mars

 

We just haven't done alot of manned stuff (If you donot count the space shuttle), but I would hardly call it wasted time

 

Maybe we need some of those highly educated Brits on our space team

Edited July 23, 2009 by BigJim

[Hasse Wind 46]

Ouch we here in Arizona were quite proud of our kids that did the unmanned landing and exploration of Mars

 

We just haven't done alot of manned stuff (If you donot count the space shuttle), but I would hardly call it wasted time

 

Maybe we need some of those highly educated Brits on our space team

 

Oh yes, plenty of useful stuff has been done by unmanned probes and Spirit and Opportunity have been extremely succesful in exploring Mars. There are many real geniuses working at the University of Arizona. But since the Apollo program, nothing *really* spectacular has been achieved with manned space flights. Again, a lot has been done with the shuttles and space stations and whatnots, but they are small things compared to what the Apollo program achieved, ie. taking men to another planetary body (a moon) and bringing them back home safely. That was truly a great moment in American history and human history in general.

 

It all comes down to money - no bucks, no Buck Rogers. With serious international efforts it would be quite possible to achieve so much more than is currently being done with national space programs only. Sadly it seems governments are more willing to spend money into devising new ways to kill people rather than supporting space exploration.

[BigJim 0]

Oh yes, plenty of useful stuff has been done by unmanned probes and Spirit and Opportunity have been extremely succesful in exploring Mars. There are many real geniuses working at the University of Arizona. But since the Apollo program, nothing *really* spectacular has been achieved with manned space flights. Again, a lot has been done with the shuttles and space stations and whatnots, but they are small things compared to what the Apollo program achieved, ie. taking men to another planetary body (a moon) and bringing them back home safely. That was truly a great moment in American history and human history in general.

 

It all comes down to money - no bucks, no Buck Rogers. With serious international efforts it would be quite possible to achieve so much more than is currently being done with national space programs only. Sadly it seems governments are more willing to spend money into devising new ways to kill people rather than supporting space exploration.

 

Well unfortunately MOST of the space stuff has been a direct result of us trying to kill one another I remember when the Russians launched "sputnik" and embarrassed our space program to the point where President Kennedy gave his "we choose to go to the moon" speach.

 

The "small things" you refer to, have cost american lives to accomplish (some of those lives lost were due to incompentency) and alot of the space shuttle and space station work has led to some pretty significant stuff here on earth. I do agree that nothing close to the huge jump of landing on the moon (from a PR prospective) has been done.

 

Being a former "missileman" may have jaded my view I served with the USAF 1961-1965, and was in during the Cuban Missle Crisis, I was with SAC and worked on the Atlas F :yes:

[Bullethead 12]

Well unfortunately MOST of the space stuff has been a direct result of us trying to kill one another

 

Apart from communications and weather satellites, what other use is there in going to space than military advantage? I can't think of any.

 

If you want to see what Mars looks like, go to the Sonora and Mojave Deserts and look at them through a pair of orange-tinted shades. Voila, you're on Mars, only you can breathe the air, the gravity is Earth-normal, you didn't absorb a lethal dose of radiation getting there, and you don't have to live undergorund to avoid getting another lethal dose of radiation from being on the surface. Plus, there are all kinds of living things to study, water to drink, etc. And most importantly, when you get tired of it, you can jump in your car and within 10 minutes be at a comfortable motel with a decent restaurant, swimming pool, and the companionship of females you haven't been cooped up with for the past year.

 

Folks say we need to colonize other planets, to ensure the survival of the species. That's total BS. For at least the next several centuries, we will never be able to move more than a handful of people to another planet even within this solar system. Thus, nobody I care about will go, and most likely none of your relatives or friends will go, either. So if your family doesn't survive, why should you spend zillions of dollars to let a very few other families, all chosen by the government, survive? Plus, given that those who go elsewhere will be effectively cut off from here, and living under very different conditions, they will necessarily become a separate species in short order. Thus, even if we do colonize some other planet, the human race as we know it won't survive if Earth is wiped out. It will be some new species that survives. So why should anybody care?

 

Until and unless these problems are overcome (which ain't going to happen in our great-grandchildrens' lifetimes, if ever), sending people into space is utterly pointless, except as regards doing things in the Earth-Moon system. The above-mentioned communications and weather satellites are quite useful, so any human maintanence they need is more than justified. Likewise, putting a military base on the moon, which is the ultimate high ground as regards bombarding Earth, is also justifiable from certain POVs, and will certainly happen because it's too big a temptation.

 

But as for human exploration beyond the Moon, what's the point? So what if it takes a human to see traces of life on Mars, Europa, or Titan? It won't make any difference in my life at all. Personally, I'd be greatly surprised if there WASN'T life, of bacterial level, on just about every rock in space--I figure the universe is chock full of pond scum. After all, it seems to be a natural property of organic molecules to organize themselves into fundamentals of life and self-replicating structures, and the universe is full of organic molecules even in interstellar space. But none of that makes any difference at all in my daily life. If probe finds life on Mars tomorrow, I'd just shrug it off as an expected development of absolutely no consequence.

 

Sorry if this rains on some peoples' parades. But seriously, what can human space exploration beyond the moon offer, as a practical matter, to justify the huge expense? And come to that, what's the pay-off of going to the Moon? If you don't use it as a training ground for going further out, the only practical reason to go there is to build a military base from which to bombard Earth with impunity. Otherwise, it's just a waste of money, and personally I'd rather not look down the barrel of guns on the Moon. Thus, why send anybody to even the Moon?

[OvS 8]

Have you guys checked out what is replacing the Oribter Missions? It's called the Orion... and remarkably... it's the same concept as the tired and true Apollo LM/CM technology. In fact, the Sartun V delivery system (aka Rocket) is being overhauled and redesigned to send the Orion package into space. It's all the same stuff, but modern. I saw it all in progress this past April when we stopped by the Kennedy Space Center in April.

 

The 60's and early 70's were the heyday of NASA... since then, they wasted a lot of time, and ground on building the ISS. I know.... it was important to build, and it is a very good tool towards scientific research and development, and of course the Hubble... but I am talking about inter planet exploration.

 

We should have kept going to the Moon, and beyond.

 

1969 was the year Man stepped on the Moon, 2009, we should be stepping on Mars.

 

All the best!

 

OvS

[Bullethead 12]

Have you guys checked out what is replacing the Oribter Missions? It's called the Orion...

 

If you want to fly it, check out the freeware sim Orbiter: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

 

It's not in the base download, but in mods you can find here: http://www.orbithangar.com/

 

The primary Orbiter forums is here, http://orbiter-forum.com/. Be warned, however, that it's INTENSELY political and dominated by a large cabal of willfully ignorant, rabidly left-wing, rabidly anti-US parties from elsewhere in the world. It often seems that their primary joy is trashing the US and pushing socialism, even in the so-called "on topic" threads. So enter at your own risk, and expect to suffer through many flame wars over politics to glean a few gems about actually playing the game.

 

The Orbiter commune--er, I mean "community"--is the main reason I don't do Orbiter anymore. It really makes me appreciate this forum, where folks from all over the world and everywhere on the political spectrum, and whose ancestors undoubtedly killed each other in the very war this forum is about, can put all that aside and just talk airplanes and pretend to kill each other with no hard feelings. I drink to you all :drinks_drunk:

 

But anyway, if you've got any interest in space travel, you really should give Orbiter a try. It'll REALLY give you an appreciation of what's possible and what isn't.

[OvS 8]

If you want to fly it, check out the freeware sim Orbiter: http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/

 

It's not in the base download, but in mods you can find here: http://www.orbithangar.com/

 

The primary Orbiter forums is here, http://orbiter-forum.com/. Be warned, however, that it's INTENSELY political and dominated by a large cabal of willfully ignorant, rabidly left-wing, rabidly anti-US parties from elsewhere in the world. It often seems that their primary joy is trashing the US and pushing socialism, even in the so-called "on topic" threads. So enter at your own risk, and expect to suffer through many flame wars over politics to glean a few gems about actually playing the game.

 

The Orbiter commune--er, I mean "community"--is the main reason I don't do Orbiter anymore. It really makes me appreciate this forum, where folks from all over the world and everywhere on the political spectrum, and whose ancestors undoubtedly killed each other in the very war this forum is about, can put all that aside and just talk airplanes and pretend to kill each other with no hard feelings. I drink to you all :drinks_drunk:

 

But anyway, if you've got any interest in space travel, you really should give Orbiter a try. It'll REALLY give you an appreciation of what's possible and what isn't.

 

A co-worker uses it and raves about it. He's really into the whole space thing, and in fact, got me back into Astronomy. :)

 

I've never tried Orbiter, but I've seen the site and downloaded it so many times with the thought of finally playing it... but I never have. Is it worth the time? I'd love to try the Apollo 11 or 12 missions they have.

 

OvS

[Hasse Wind 46]

Bullethead, where's your boyish sense of adventure? I hope you aren't getting too old! As to money, well, a manned mission to the Mars is really cheap compared to waging war. And with proper international cooperation, the costs wouldn't have to be the burden of only one nation. (Think of ESA but in a much bigger scale.) Besides, just think about how stupid uses the governments have found for taxpayer money during the latest economy crisis?

 

Why go to Mars? I think Mr. James Cameron put it nicely in his address to the International Mars Society in August 1999:

 

Why are we gonna spend billions of dollars to do this? People are always saying we've gotta solve our problems right here on Earth before we go spending money out in space. It makes me puke, frankly.

 

Check back in 500 or 1,000 years and people are still gonna be talking about all the problems that need to be solved. We're never gonna reach some utopian plateau where everything is solved so we can kind of with lordly confidence look around for worlds to conquer as some kind of hobby. You know, not spreading ourselves out within the solar system now, when we have the capability to do so, is one of the problems we have to be solving right here on Earth.

 

We're really at a turning point: We either go forward or we go back. By stopping and stagnating, we actually go back. I look around at the turn of the millennium and I see a prosperous, powerful, technologically unparalleled society, which collectively has no purpose but to feather its own nest. It's a goal-less, rudderless society dedicated to increasing security and creature comforts. Our children are raised in a world without heroes. They are led to believe that heroism consists of throwing a football the furthest, getting the most hang time during a slam dunk, or selling the most movie tickets with your looks and your boyish charm.

 

This is not heroism, and these are not the valid tests of our mettle as an intelligent race. Young kids need something to dream about, something to measure their value system again. They live in a sea of mind numbing affluence, a point-and-shoot video game world where it's hip not to care, where death and violence have no meaning, where leaders are morally bankrupt, and where the scientific quest for understanding is so not cool. Going to Mars is not a luxury we can't afford. It's a necessity we can't afford to be without. We need this.

 

We need this, or some kind of challenge like it, to bring us together to all feel a part of something and to have heroes again. The problem is there's no challenge on our horizon like Mars. If we rise to a challenge, we're gonna redefine ourselves, and we're gonna ratchet ourselves up another notch in the evolutionary ladder. In return, Mars will reward us with answers to profound questions and with a renewed sense of self-worth as a species.

 

Survival on the red planet will not be easy, but neither will it be impossible. Rather, it will be just difficult enough. Mars is a place we can just reach standing on tiptoe. To live there will be an awesome task, but one which we can meet. Mars will be the next great test of ourselves. It will test our intelligence, our bravery, our endurance, our questing spirit, our ability to cooperate, and indeed, every noble and worthy aspect of human potential.

 

Just as an Indian boy on the cusp of manhood walks alone in the wasteland on his vision quest, confronting Mars will be a right of passage for our adolescent children -- or adolescent civilization. It will be our collective vision quest by which we will know ourselves and find the next clue to our destiny. When the first man or woman sets foot on Mars, every human being on Earth will stand vicariously in those boots at that moment. We will all as one be uplifted and ennobled. We will be energized by the exhilaration of the accomplishment, and of being part of the greatest adventure of all.

 

In an age when the horizons have grown near, when the lands of mystery are as close as the travel channel, when everything seems known and tired, when all the wildernesses are conquered, the human soul is starved for challenge. Only our outbound quest can satisfy this hunger, which is a very real hunger that is at once spiritual, psychological, emotional, as well as intellectual. We do this for knowledge and to hone our technical capabilities. But most of all, we do it for our deepest hearts, which yearn outward.

[ONETINSOLDIER 2]

QUOTE, "But as for human exploration beyond the Moon, what's the point? So what if it takes a human to see traces of life on Mars, Europa, or Titan?"

 

YOU HOOMANZ ARENT PAYING ATTENTION, ARE YOU,,,

[Bullethead 12]

Is it worth the time? I'd love to try the Apollo 11 or 12 missions they have.

 

Orbiter is very much worth it. It teaches you a LOT about the realities of space travel, so you can actually consider yourself an amateur rocket scientist after a while. But don't let that scare you off; your computer does all the hard math. All you have to do is get a vague understanding of the concepts that the complicated math deals with. It also helps to research good launch windows for going where you want to go, because the game won't tell you.

 

Orbiter could be classified more as a toy than a game. There is no combat, there is no score. It's just about driving a spaceship from point A to point B without crashing it, getting lost, running out of fuel, getting too hot, etc. But this is extremely fascinating.

 

There are zillions of mods for it, ranging from real and imaginary spaceships to entirely different solar systems. With these mods, you can do every historical space shot (even unmanned probes), plus build futurisitic space stations piece-by-piece, etc. But don't overlook the MFD mods, which make interplanetary navigation, rendezvousing and docking, and landing so much easier than the stock instruments.

 

Be warned, however, that Orbiter is a great shatterer of illusions. It will dash any hopes you have of ever seeing a substantial number of people even on the Moon, let alone further away.

 

Bullethead, where's your boyish sense of adventure? I hope you aren't getting too old!

 

There are 2 types of adventurers: those who want adventures at least indirectly involving other people, and those who actively court death by exposure in the uninhabitable wastes. I'm in the 1st category. To me, adventure is experiencing the culture, food, booze, and women of foriegn lands, and perhaps getting into a fight or finding treasure there. You know, the swashbuckling stuff of ripping yarns. So in the past, I'd have been all over exploring the Americas or the South Seas, and these days I'd be happy to try to colonize the ocean floor. But no way in Hell would I have gone on a polar expedition .

 

To me, manned space exploration is today's version of the polar expeditions of a century ago: a tiny group of masochistic lunatics going on a long, arduous journey to the far side of nowhere, which can achieve absolutely nothing of practical value. They get there, they plant a flag and take a photo, and maybe they get home again, suffering all the way, and have serious health problems for the rest of their shortened lifespans. All anybody else gets out of it is a multi-billion dollar photo they'll only look at when its anniversary comes around ever decade.

 

As to money, well, a manned mission to the Mars is really cheap compared to waging war.

 

Most wars, however, at least serve a practical purpose. You might not agree with that purpose, but you can't argue with its practicality.

 

Why go to Mars? I think Mr. James Cameron put it nicely in his address to the International Mars Society in August 1999:

 

To those who want to go to Mars personally, I say this: Your goal is obviously to commit suicide in a spectacular and pointless manner. Therefore, take up one of today's many extreme sports. You can fund that out of your own pocket. In fact, the less money you spend on it, the sooner you'll find the horrible death you seek.

 

You know, not spreading ourselves out within the solar system now, when we have the capability to do so, is one of the problems we have to be solving right here on Earth.

Problem is, we do NOT have the capability to do this, nor will we in timespans measured in less than centuries. We simply cannot generate the necessary horsepower (or delta-V in rocket science terms). Anyone who says otherwise is either smoking crack or just wants to get a federal grant to pay his bills so he doesn't have to get a real job.

 

It takes billions of dollars and the biggest rockets we can make to fling something the size of a car or small truck to the Moon or Mars and get it back. Forget going further away, at least if you want to return, and don't forget it'll take you a decade or more 1-way travel time. Anyway, all this huge expense will suffice to carry no more than a half-dozen people at once, and it can't be done very often due to the enormous cost. The net result is absolutely zero effect on Earth's population and insufficient people in space to prevent inbreeding at the tiny colonies we're able to establish, assuming they can survive the hazards of the trip and environment there.

 

We need this, or some kind of challenge like it, to bring us together to all feel a part of something and to have heroes again. The problem is there's no challenge on our horizon like Mars. If we rise to a challenge, we're gonna redefine ourselves, and we're gonna ratchet ourselves up another notch in the evolutionary ladder. In return, Mars will reward us with answers to profound questions and with a renewed sense of self-worth as a species.

"Some kind of challenge like it" can be found MUCH closer to home. We occupy less than 25% of this planet's surface. What about spreading out here first? More people have been to the Moon than the deepest part of the ocean right here at home.

 

Besides, people can't tell us anything about Mars that robots can't tell us already, or will be able to very soon. So you don't need people to answer "profound questions", and of course the answers (like if there is/was life on Mars) are of zero practical value. Also, does ANYBODY feel any compelling need for a sense of "self-worth as a species"? I sure don't. There are people I'm ashamed to call my close relatives, so why should I want to invent ties to all the other people in the world, many of whom are equally worthless?

 

As mentioned above, the whole problem with human space travel is that it takes all our money and our best science to generate enough delta-V just barely to lift a half-dozen people once in a while, and move them so slowly that it takes most of year just to get to Mars. This is NOT going to change any time soon.

 

Meaningful human space colonization will only be possible when it can be done on a scale comparable with the European immigration to the US in the late 1800s and early 1900s. That is, a large-scale migration. You need to move hundreds of people at once, with all their belongings and supplies, on a very frequent basis. You need a fleet of space "ocean liners", IOW, which are much faster than our current spacecraft. We're not even close to being able to do that.

 

To make this a reality, we have to first find a way around the prodigious cost of getting stuff into orbit. Rockets ain't going to do that, but maybe a space elevator or something similar might work. Whatever it is, though, it must be capable of moving HUGE quantities of materials and people to orbit, where these space liners would be built, crewed, and loaded. Then the liners themselves will need a new type of engine far more efficient than anything we can make now, or even theorize about at present.

 

I have no objection to doing things this way. If we can figure out how, it would be of great practical benefit. But only once we overcome these hurdles can we get serious about colonizing other planets.

 

This is why I'm against going to Mars any time soon. Such a trip is just a pointless propaganda photo-op at present, just like going to the Moon was. Furthermore, it accomplishes NOTHING toward the practical goal of moving lots of people into space. The International Space Station, OTOH, is actually laying useful groundwork towards that practical goal, no matter how inefficiently, so I grudginly support it. True, it'll never leave low Earth orbit, but until we can occupy LEO on an industrial scale indefinitely, we're not going to go anywhere else in a meaningful way.

[Herr Prop-Wasche 7]

Here is an interesting article about the development of an Ion engine which could potentially shorten a Mars trip to 39 days! They have no timeline on the delivery of this rocket yet, but testing on a first-stage prototype is expected within a few years. However, the inter-planetary version requires a nuclear engine! Still, if this could be accomplished in 50 years isn't it worth pursuing?

 

Several space missions have already used ion engines, including NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which is en route to the asteroids Vesta and CeresMovie Camera, and Japan's spacecraft Hayabusa, which rendezvoused with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005.

 

But a new engine, called VASIMR (Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket), will have much more "oomph" than previous ones. That's because it uses a radio frequency generator, similar to transmitters used to broadcast radio shows, to heat the charged particles, or plasma.

 

The engine is being developed by the Ad Astra Rocket Company, which was founded in 2005 by plasma physicist and former space shuttle astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz.

 

VASIMR works something like a steam engine, with the first stage performing a duty analogous to boiling water to create steam. The radio frequency generator heats a gas of argon atoms until electrons "boil" off, creating plasma. This stage was tested for the first time on 2 July at Ad Astra's headquarters in Webster, Texas.

 

The plasma could produce thrust on its own if it were shot out of the rocket, but not very efficiently. To optimise efficiency, the rocket's second stage then heats the ions to about a million degrees, a temperature comparable to that at the centre of the sun.

 

It does this by taking advantage of the fact that in a strong magnetic field – like those produced by superconducting magnets in the engine, ions spin at a fixed frequency. The radio frequency generator is then tuned to that same frequency, injecting extra energy into the ions.

 

Strong magnetic fields then channel the plasma out the back of the engine, propelling the rocket in the opposite direction.

 

Thanks to the radio frequency generator, VASIMR can reach power levels a hundred times as high as other engines, which simply accelerate their plasma by sending it through a series of metal grids with different voltages. In that setup, ions colliding with the grid tend to erode it, limiting the power and lifetime of the rocket. VASIMR's radio frequency generator gets around that problem by never coming into contact with the ions.

 

"It's the most powerful superconducting plasma source ever, as far as we know," says Jared Squire, director of research at Ad Astra.

 

Scientists at Ad Astra began tests of the engine's second stage – which heats the plasma – last week. So far, team members have run the two-stage engine at a power of 50 kilowatts. But they hope to ramp up to 200 kW of power in ongoing tests, enough to provide about a pound of thrust. That may not sound like much, but in space it can propel up to two tonnes of cargo, reaching Jupiter in about 19 months from a starting position relatively close to the sun, says Squire.

Orbital boosts

 

Ad Astra and NASA have agreed to test fire the rocket in space, attached to the International Space Station in 2012 or 2013. Potentially, VASIMR could provide the periodic boosts needed to keep the ISS in its orbit.

 

At its current power level, VASIMR could be run entirely on solar energy. Squire says it would make a good Earth-orbit tugboat, pulling satellites to different orbits. It could also shuttle cargo to a lunar base, and because it could travel relatively quickly, it could be deployed to dangerous asteroids to gravitationally nudge them off course years before they would reach Earth.

 

To travel to Mars in 39 days, however, the engine would need 1000 times more power than solar energy could provide. For that, VASIMR would need an onboard nuclear reactor.

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1747...ars.html?page=1

[BigJim 0]

Heh all of Bulletheads arguements are based on a Earth launched vehicle, but if that vehicle is launched from a space station much more weight can be shuttled around for power spent :) Hence the value of the time spend working on said space station.

[Bullethead 12]

Here is an interesting article about the development of an Ion engine which could potentially shorten a Mars trip to 39 days!

 

Again, for something the size of a car or small truck, carrying at most a half-dozen people, and it will still need some other method of getting off the ground, because it lacks the thrust to defeat gravity.

 

Conventional rockets are slow because they have just barely enough delta-V to push their mass (including fuel for braking at the destination and then returning) out of Earth's gravity well. Then they have to coast the whole trip. But the fastest way to go between planets is to burn the whole way. The 1st half of the trip, you accelerate continuously and build up a lot of speed. Then you turn around and decelerate all through the 2nd half of the trip to slow down enough to stop at your destination. This is what ion engines to, but the problem is pulling it off with a useful payload.

 

Ion engines, even this one, produce ridiculously small amounts of thrust. They have to, because that's the only way to make the fuel (or technically, the reaction mass) last long enough to burn the whole way there (and back, if you want to get home). In space, even a tiny amount of thrust can move a huge object, true enough. However, F = ma still applies. Thus, the only way to get a good acceleration out of a tiny thrust is if the mass is kept small, too, in proportion to the thrust. This rules out using ion engines for usefully large space liners, which again limits us to sending insignificant numbers of people off Earth.

 

the inter-planetary version requires a nuclear engine!

 

One of the things I continually chuckle at is that some folks think space is some pure, virgin territory and that radiation from a nuclear space engine would pollute it. In reality, space is saturated with horrible radiation put there by God Himself, so nothing us little humans put there would be a noticeable addition. The sky is full of completely unshielded nuclear reactors, called stars, many of which are much bigger than the sun, which itself is thousands of times bigger than this whole planet.

 

Still, if this could be accomplished in 50 years isn't it worth pursuing?

 

Sure, it's worth pursuing. It can do many useful things. It's just not the answer to the real problem of getting more than an insignificant number of people off this rock.

 

Heh all of Bulletheads arguements are based on a Earth launched vehicle...

 

You cannot avoid launches from Earth, because every single thing we send to another planet has to start off on the ground. That's the people, everything they take with them, and the ship. Sure, you can build the ship in orbit, but you still have get the parts and materials up there. PLUS you also have to lift all the people and materials to build the orbital shipyard beforehand, keep it supplied while the ship is being built, and rotate shifts of dockyard workers up and down every month or so.

 

This is why just getting to orbit is probably the biggest single hurdle on the way to the planets. Folks tend to take reaching orbit for granted these days, what with all the satellites we put there all the time. But these satellites are very small, and even so launching each one is hugely expensive. Think about how many full-price shuttle launches it would take to put even 100 people into orbit to board a hypothetical space liner to Mars, and how long the 1st ones up would have to wait until the last ones arrived. Now think about how that space liner came to be up there to begin with.

 

So until we can find a cheap, reliable, and frequent way of getting huge numbers of people and megtons of materials into orbit, we're all stuck on Earth. We're talking changes of several orders of magnitude over the SUM of everything we've done before in space. THAT'S the real challenge of planetary colonization.

 

I have no doubt that if we started today, in a few years we could put a handful of people on Mars and get them home, provided they don't kill each other somewhere along the way. They might even live long enough afterwards for the politicians to visit them in the ICU for a poignant photo-op. And I'm sure those of us footing the bill for it all would have a moment somewhere along the line when we thought it was pretty cool. It would be about the same feeling you get watching a YouTube video of some clever stunt, and would interest you about as long.

 

Far better, IMHO, to spend the money instead on figuring out a cheap way to get massive quantities of stuff into orbit. Once we're there en masse, we can do all kinds of things. But until we can do that, manned space exploration is a complete waste of time and money IMHO.

[OlPaint01 0]

BulletHead

 

Think Space Elevator!!!

 

OlPaint01

[Bullethead 12]

Think Space Elevator!!!

 

I do, every day. In fact, I mentioned it in my 1st wall o' text several posts ago.

 

Problem is, I really don't think it will work on the scale necessary to do what needs doing.

[NS13Jarhead 6]

Darn it, I just want my flying car that Walt Disney promised me in the '60s!

[BigJim 0]

Well for starters the current space shuttle could ferry up to 100 people without all the scientific payload, secondly not all the materiel needed would have to come from earth.

 

Also a space station on the moon with much less gravity would also cut the amount of power needed to move payloads and if my memory serves me right there was discussion about making fuel on moon, along with O2 and other gases.

 

The third point is, if we had listened to all the boobirds in the first place we would not have gone to the moon. Anytime something new is proposed there will always be those that say "it will never fly".

[Bullethead 12]

I think you're missing my point, so I'll address your last point first.

 

The third point is, if we had listened to all the boobirds in the first place we would not have gone to the moon. Anytime something new is proposed there will always be those that say "it will never fly".

 

I'm not a boobird. I grew up reading hardcore science fiction, and I even write a little of it myself. I am all for human space travel. I want very much for us to colonize other planets, perhaps even go to another solar system someday. However, I look at the subject rather differently than the starry-eyed "on to Mars!" crowd.

 

Those folks are snake-oil salesmen. They couch their arguments in such glorious prose that they've completely hidden the harsh reality of the substance behind a veil of symbolism. This is just so they can get funding to work on their pet project and get their names down in history as having been part of the 1st manned Mars mission. They KNOW that they're making all kinds of empy promises, but the average person doesn't know enough about space travel to realize this, so might actually vote to spend the money.

 

Many laymen seem to think that just because we can put a half-dozen people in a short-term, completely unsustainable tincan on Mars, suddenly we're an interplanetary species. Now all of a sudden, they think everybody can go to Mars as a tourist or live there permanently if they want. Then Earth can offload some excess population and humanity will be able to survive a big meteor hitting Earth.

 

But that's all BS. The very limit of our technology is putting, at great expense, a half-dozen people in a temporary tincan on Mars. And that is NOT going to change any time soon, for the simple reason of Earth's gravity. We might get very good at sending out handfuls of people, but we're never going to make any difference to Earth or humanity until we can move MILLIONS of people and all their stuff, and probably terraform Mars and/or Venus along the way.

 

I predict that if we do send somebody to Mars in the near future, it will be many decades, probably a century or more, before anybody goes back there. Look at how long it's been since anybody's been to the Moon just next door. Having planted the flag and gotten into the history books, and the world now knowing how futile its hopes were for getting anything lasting out of the show, the starry-eyed rocket scientists will be forced back to doing something that might lead to practical benefits.

 

So go ahead and vote for a Mars trip if it makes you feel good. But understand that it's a complete waste of time and money which would be better spent trying to solve the real problems of human space travel.

 

Well for starters the current space shuttle could ferry up to 100 people without all the scientific payload,

 

Doubtful--astronauts need rather more legroom than airline passengers :). Besides, the shuttle's air supply won't let that many people breathe very long, so they'd have to be offloaded immediately into some huge facility that could support them all, which doens't yet exist. On top of that, colonists would have a lot of carry-on luggage to last them the many months the trip will take, plus numerous checked-in crates of household furnishings to set up their new homes. Not to mention all the supplies and spare parts they'd need.

 

secondly not all the materiel needed would have to come from earth.

 

Also a space station on the moon with much less gravity would also cut the amount of power needed to move payloads and if my memory serves me right there was discussion about making fuel on moon, along with O2 and other gases.

 

Unfortunately, using extraterrestrial materials to built spaceships in orbit doens't cheat gravity in the least. On top of this, you can't use extraterrestrial materials to bootstrap space colonization because to get them, you have to have already colonized space on a large scale. IOW, it's putting the cart before the horse.

 

The reason for this is that only on Earth is there an industrial complex. Thus, if you build a big ship in Earth orbit, you just have to lift subassemblies to LEO. They still add up to the mass of the ship, but they're spread out in little packages and you don't have to lift them very high. OTOH, building a ship on the Moon will first required you to establish a permanent colony there. You'd have to establish mines, factories, and powerplants, all on a large industrial scale. Running and maintaining all that would require a large, self-sufficient, permanent population, with all its housing, utilities, food, air, etc. All the stuff necessary for that would have to be taken all the way to the Moon, which requires way more delta-V than just getting to LEO. And all that has to be done before you'd see a single spaceship part roll off the line.

 

You can, of course, use a few electrochemical tricks to generate water, O2, and thus naturally LH/LOX rocket fuel on the Moon. And you can probably grow plants there, although raising cattle is probably impractical. However, EVERYTHING used in the Moon base, at least to get it started, and except perhaps building materials made of lunar rock, has to be carried up there. All the mining excavators, all the milling machines, all the circuitboard etchers, all the trucks to carry their products around, and all the spare parts for them, at least until the factories can make their own. And remember, this has to be on a vast scale, capable of producing huge, complex machines like interplanetary spacecraft in a reasonable amount of time.

 

It's the issue of scale that most folks seem to be ignoring. Sure, we can toss a handful of people to another planet, at least temporarily, but actually colonizing the place is a whole 'nuther story. The effort required is akin to picking up an Earth city and physically moving it, and everything and everybody in it, all the way to another planet. And that's just not going to happen until we can make LEO effectively part of Earth's surface, which ain't gonna happen any time soon.

 

Which brings us back to the point of human space travel. The starry-eyed types gloss over the issue of scale completely while spinning tales of colonizing planets. But there's no getting around the problem, and that's not likely to change any time soon. Thus, for the foreseeable future, we're talking about just a few handfuls of people. Maybe, with a lot of luck, some scientific breakthroughs, and a long enough time, these tiny seeds will grow up into large colonies. But note that this does absolutely nothing at all for anybody on Earth. Only a handful of people will have descendants on other planets, Earth will still be overpopulated, and a meteor is still likely to wipe everybody out, because without periodic support from home, the tiny colonies will surely die out.

 

In all this discussion so far, we've barely touched on the devastating physiological effects of prolonged stints in space or in low gravity. This affects all human space travel, small-scale or large. Those eager to go to Mars today accept that even if they make it home, they probably won't be able to live normal lives and likely won't live much longer. So that's another big problem to overcome before we can get serious about migrating elsewhere.

[Hasse Wind 46]

Bullethead, there's nothing new in your post about the difficulties of space travel that people who are seriously involved in space programs or are interested in them as amateurs don't already know. I don't think any of us here belong to that "on to Mars!" starry-eyed crowd. This is the real world, not Star Trek. Heck, it may well be that interstellar travel will never be possible, because the distances involved are so ridiculously enormous. But who knows what technological development will make possible for the human race - it wasn't that long ago when people thought flying machines were impossible, and look at where we are now.

 

However, extensive space travel and eventually colonization and taking advantage of the resources in our own solar system is far from being impossible to achieve. It sure as hell won't be easy, but the first steps must be taken some day if anything is to be accomplished. :yes:

[Bullethead 12]

Bullethead, there's nothing new in your post about the difficulties of space travel that people who are seriously involved in space programs or are interested in them as amateurs don't already know. I don't think any of us here belong to that "on to Mars!" starry-eyed crowd. This is the real world, not Star Trek.

 

Maybe folks here are more pragmatic, but the rocket scientist community seems quite full of starry-eyed snakeoil salesmen. At least, they're the ones who get all the air time on TV, even if they're just a vocal minority. Still, as real rocket scientists, they obviously know that true space colonization isn't going to be possible in the foreseeable future, and that a trip to Mars in the near future won't do anything to change that. Yet they continue to talk as if a near-future Mars mission will in fact open the doors to immediate colonization of space, or somehow solve various serious problems here on Earth. At worst this is out-and-out lying, at best it's willful misrepresentation.

 

The obvious question to ask is, why do they feel the need to mislead the public? The obvious answer is, because they think such rhetoric is necessary as a sales pitch to get the money. But if a Mars mission can't return the advertised benefits, why do it? The best answer to that I can see is that they want the glory for being the 1st to do it. After all, if it's possible, somebody will certainly do it fairly soon, and nobody remembers who came in 2nd place.

 

OTOH, I can see how rocket scientists today, who are in their late-40s or older, must be fairly frustrated. They grew up watching the stepping-stone progress of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. These program no doubt are what attracted them to the field, and they entered it in full expectation of the same sort of trend continuing. But now here they are in today's situation, and no longer young. Those who haven't lost their enthusiams along the way, and who now know full well how long it takes to get a major program from drawing board to launch pad, must be thinking that if they don't start now, they'll retire without realizing the dreams that got them into the business in the 1st place. So again, they're pushing a Mars mission now for personal reasons, although perhaps not quite as selfish as the above.

 

But maybe this is being too harsh. Maybe some of these guys honestly think that only a radical change of mission will shake the space program out of what they perceive to be stagnation in LEO with the ISS and shuttle. Some of them actually claim that as a motive, whether they really believe it or not. Personally, I think this is just another way of expressing the "my retirement clock is ticking" motive above. But even if they really believe that space exploration has stagnated, they're forgetting the sad fact that until we thoroughly conquer LEO, we can't go anywhere else in enough numbers to matter a hill of beans, and that going to Mars now isn't going to change that.

 

The reason nobody's been back to the Moon in nearly 40 years is that we only went there for the artificial reason of political prestige. There was not then, and there is not now, any survival- or market-driven demand for Apollo's product, so once we planted the flag and the political ego was satisfied, Moon missions ended. Today, technology has advanced to the point where a trip to Mars, on the same insignificant scale as Apollo, is either possible or will be very soon. Thus, political prestige is again at stake, but there is still a lack of a true driving need for such a trip. Thus, once somebody proves it can be done, that'll be the end of it, just like the Moon missions ended. I daresay that 40 years from now, the great cry will be for being the 1st to get a few people to a Jovian moon, despite the fact that nobody's been back to Mars yet. And then to Titan after that, and so on. Meanwhile, the space developments of real importance will still be happening, slowly and unglamorously, in LEO, probably by the private sector.

[BigJim 0]

Maybe folks here are more pragmatic, but the rocket scientist community seems quite full of starry-eyed snakeoil salesmen. At least, they're the ones who get all the air time on TV, even if they're just a vocal minority. Still, as real rocket scientists, they obviously know that true space colonization isn't going to be possible in the foreseeable future, and that a trip to Mars in the near future won't do anything to change that. Yet they continue to talk as if a near-future Mars mission will in fact open the doors to immediate colonization of space, or somehow solve various serious problems here on Earth. At worst this is out-and-out lying, at best it's willful misrepresentation.

 

The obvious question to ask is, why do they feel the need to mislead the public? The obvious answer is, because they think such rhetoric is necessary as a sales pitch to get the money. But if a Mars mission can't return the advertised benefits, why do it? The best answer to that I can see is that they want the glory for being the 1st to do it. After all, if it's possible, somebody will certainly do it fairly soon, and nobody remembers who came in 2nd place.

 

OTOH, I can see how rocket scientists today, who are in their late-40s or older, must be fairly frustrated. They grew up watching the stepping-stone progress of Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. These program no doubt are what attracted them to the field, and they entered it in full expectation of the same sort of trend continuing. But now here they are in today's situation, and no longer young. Those who haven't lost their enthusiams along the way, and who now know full well how long it takes to get a major program from drawing board to launch pad, must be thinking that if they don't start now, they'll retire without realizing the dreams that got them into the business in the 1st place. So again, they're pushing a Mars mission now for personal reasons, although perhaps not quite as selfish as the above.

 

But maybe this is being too harsh. Maybe some of these guys honestly think that only a radical change of mission will shake the space program out of what they perceive to be stagnation in LEO with the ISS and shuttle. Some of them actually claim that as a motive, whether they really believe it or not. Personally, I think this is just another way of expressing the "my retirement clock is ticking" motive above. But even if they really believe that space exploration has stagnated, they're forgetting the sad fact that until we thoroughly conquer LEO, we can't go anywhere else in enough numbers to matter a hill of beans, and that going to Mars now isn't going to change that.

 

The reason nobody's been back to the Moon in nearly 40 years is that we only went there for the artificial reason of political prestige. There was not then, and there is not now, any survival- or market-driven demand for Apollo's product, so once we planted the flag and the political ego was satisfied, Moon missions ended. Today, technology has advanced to the point where a trip to Mars, on the same insignificant scale as Apollo, is either possible or will be very soon. Thus, political prestige is again at stake, but there is still a lack of a true driving need for such a trip. Thus, once somebody proves it can be done, that'll be the end of it, just like the Moon missions ended. I daresay that 40 years from now, the great cry will be for being the 1st to get a few people to a Jovian moon, despite the fact that nobody's been back to Mars yet. And then to Titan after that, and so on. Meanwhile, the space developments of real importance will still be happening, slowly and unglamorously, in LEO, probably by the private sector.

 

Regardless of the "motive" money must be spent if the program is to happen, your arguement is that it should not be "public money" if I read you right. I agree. with this proviso, no public money no public interferance, i.e. the government keeps their "greedy" hands off when the endevor starts to pay money.

[OvS 8]

Regardless of the "motive" money must be spent if the program is to happen, your arguement is that it should not be "public money" if I read you right. I agree. with this proviso, no public money no public interferance, i.e. the government keeps their "greedy" hands off when the endevor starts to pay money.

 

 

I have to disagree here. If you look at many of the grants the US Gov't hands out for some of the most bizzare research on issues that really won't effect anyone, other than the person doing the research, it's mind-boggling. That's money we should be questioning and putting into R&D of aviation and space exploration.

 

I'd rather see my Gov't dump more money back into NASA, and get things going again, back the way it was in the 60's and 70's. Heck, even Airliners haven't improved much since the 747's rolled out back in 1975. Sure, the 777, A380 and 787's are bigger, more efficient and safer (well, nothing is ever without a glitch as we have seen very recently), but as far as fast, no. Nothing since the Concorde, and nothing on the boards to replace it.

 

More research has to be invested into aviation. It's not a Bus Service as it's been left to, it's the core of travel in the air and space. By now, we should have already had commercial aircraft that follow the standards of Harrier jets, and use more effecient pulse jets, and other forms of higher technology for propulsion. Better radar and air traffic control monitoring... etc. But it takes a lot of money from Government programs, not private investors.

 

The basic design of the commercial airplane hasn't really changed much from the 60's B707's, and that's 40 years wasted. It's easy to keep the norm and the standard, but by now, the standards should have been higher.

 

OvS