Goodbye moon?

[|Rapture|]

Yep gut NASA's budget, just pump it all into "social" programs to keep the lazy from getting a job

Because flying to the moon is more important than making health care available to your whole population.

[ylcard]

Personally I see no point in manned missions to any planet, it's pretty much a fact that they're not hospitable, and except for these "bases", there's not much use for them. Why would you build a base on the Moon ? What possible advantage does the Moon have over Earth ? Lower/weaker gravity ? You'd need a lot of material (money) to build it, you'd need a lot more people, you'd eventually need to perform maintenance on the base.

Manned missions are a thing of the past, in my opinion.

We need to concentrate on Earth, frankly, it means nothing to 99.999% of the population of our planet that the Sun will explode in 5 billion years, or that there are beams of light coming at us from the past (the really, really ancient past), or that we can die at any moment from some gamma-ray burst, it means nothing, seriously.

How about they spend their money on removing the junk orbiting the Earth (instead of just contributing more to the pile), or experiment in flight technologies, or recycling, or something that is useful to everyone.

It might seem like it's beyond (or not even IN) their scope, but seriously, we need to do something else.

[jebus197]

How do I unsubscribe form my own thread? I had no intention of allowing it to turn into some kind of lame political debate about SS and healthcare. It was meant to be a debate about the merits of manned space flight V's none. What's the private enterprise incentive to go to Mars, or Saturn's moons, or anywhere else just to do pure science? Big projects like these usually take a government incentive, because there is no effective profit margin in them, just cost. The pay-off itself is the science. However how is a private company likely to find any value in this?

[redfish]

Personally I see no point in manned missions to any planet, it's pretty much a fact that they're not hospitable, and except for these "bases", there's not much use for them. Why would you build a base on the Moon ? What possible advantage does the Moon have over Earth ? Lower/weaker gravity ? You'd need a lot of material (money) to build it, you'd need a lot more people, you'd eventually need to perform maintenance on the base.

Yes, it would be easier to launch something from the moon to Mars. It might cost money to maintain; but the largest cost by far in a spaceflight, from what I understand, is on fuel.

[iamawesomewicked]

I still can't believe Obama has killed NASA's plan to go back to the moon. I guess we'll have to wait for another Republican President to revive the plan.

Yes.. Spend billions of dollars to get people to jump around like jackasses on the moon. S M R T

[carmatic]

What??? I give up. Lol.

what's wrong? at some point as you dig deeper into the moon, its going to get above 0 celcius degrees... being trapped underneath layers of rock would mean that the water wouldnt evaporate into space... in fact 0 degrees celcius for the melting point of water isnt necessary , depending on the conditions like how much pressure the water is in etc

[carmatic]

Yes.. Spend billions of dollars to get people to jump around like jackasses on the moon. S M R T

you do know that the guys they sent to the moon didnt just 'jump around like jackasses' , right?

1. S-031: Passive seismic experiment. Achieved.

2. S-059: Lunar field geology. Partially achieved. Although two core tube samples and 15 pounds of additional lunar samples were obtained, time constraints precluded collection of these samples with the degree of documentation originally planned. In addition, time did not permit the collection of a lunar environmental sample or a gas analysis sample in the two special containers provided. It was, however, possible to obtain the desired results using other samples contained in the regular sample return containers.

3. S-078: Laser ranging retroreflector experiment. Achieved.

4. S-080: Solar wind composition. Achieved.

5. S-151: Cosmic ray detection. Achieved.

6. M-151: Pilot describing function. Achieved.

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11b_Objectives.htm

[iamawesomewicked]

you do know that the guys they sent to the moon didnt just 'jump around like jackasses' , right?

http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_11b_Objectives.htm

Yes, I know. To go to the moon when they wanted to go in the future.. just isn't viable.

[ludeboy12]

Well I gotta say I'm a bit disappointed with what NObama is doing with the space program. Of course I'm not surprised by this just disappointed. The NASA budget is pretty damn small in the whole grand scheme of things. Even if he were to shut it down immediately that money really wouldn't fix much of anything.

All this news really means is that thousands of people in central Florida will be out of jobs as Aires and the other programs shut down.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

If we're going to go back to the moon, it should be for a long term settlement, no point going back just for a few hours each time.

[Draconian Guppy]

I wish they would hurry up already, so we can get started with the "no, we didn't go to the moon again" :rolleyes: :whistle:

[Laurë Veteran]

This is sad news :(

Personally I see no point in manned missions to any planet, it's pretty much a fact that they're not hospitable, and except for these "bases", there's not much use for them. Why would you build a base on the Moon ? What possible advantage does the Moon have over Earth ? Lower/weaker gravity ? You'd need a lot of material (money) to build it, you'd need a lot more people, you'd eventually need to perform maintenance on the base.

Manned missions are a thing of the past, in my opinion.

We need to concentrate on Earth, frankly, it means nothing to 99.999% of the population of our planet that the Sun will explode in 5 billion years, or that there are beams of light coming at us from the past (the really, really ancient past), or that we can die at any moment from some gamma-ray burst, it means nothing, seriously.

How about they spend their money on removing the junk orbiting the Earth (instead of just contributing more to the pile), or experiment in flight technologies, or recycling, or something that is useful to everyone.

It might seem like it's beyond (or not even IN) their scope, but seriously, we need to do something else.

Once the initial outlay was done to move material up there and set up a base there could be quite a few advantages.

Another possibility that New Scientist magazine had an article on was setting up a base on Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars. This could make it easier to send and control unmanned missions down to Mars. Currently control of Mars robots is very slow because you can't do it in real time, it's just too far away.

Seeing far back into the ancient past is important. Given the arguments people have over religion and where we come from, I can't imagine how anyone could claim this stuff doesn't matter to people.

That's not really a good argument anyway. Just because it's not important to most people does not mean it's not actually important. Most people are not able to think ahead as demonstrated by their poor decision making.

Space research and development has also led to many useful inventions and discoveries back here on Earth, a source of innovation would be cut off if NASA died.

[y_notm]

what's wrong? at some point as you dig deeper into the moon, its going to get above 0 celcius degrees... being trapped underneath layers of rock would mean that the water wouldnt evaporate into space... in fact 0 degrees celcius for the melting point of water isnt necessary , depending on the conditions like how much pressure the water is in etc

The moon isn't geologically active, so I don't see why sub-surface would be warmer than the surface.

[redfish]

If we're going to go back to the moon, it should be for a long term settlement, no point going back just for a few hours each time.

The plan NASA had was to build a system in conjunction with the space station that could be used repeatedly to take people to the moon. Eventually, that would allow a base to be built there. Thats what was scrapped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constellation_program

And you know the NASA budget wasn't that good for it. But I really don't see what the problem would be if we increased the NASA budget, NASA isn't really a budgetary problem.

[08993]

We need to concentrate on Earth, frankly, it means nothing to 99.999% of the population of our planet that the Sun will explode in 5 billion years, or that there are beams of light coming at us from the past (the really, really ancient past), or that we can die at any moment from some gamma-ray burst, it means nothing, seriously.

At some point we will outgrow the planet and/or consume all of its resources, unless we start imposing some kind of population control. Also, any number of ELE's could occur such as a big Volcano could erupt blacking out the sky and killing all vegetation thus killing us as well - plenty to worry about before the Sun goes pop.

Hence forth, it's not a bad idea to be looking into expanding into Space right now, we need to piggy-back from place to place to do it though. Set up a base A to prepare a base for B, set up a base B and prepare a base for C and so forth. My fear is that as we consume more resources and our population explodes, expendable cash to research it just won't be there, makes sense to do it whilst we (or some) are relatively prosperous.

This planet won't contain us at this rate of growth, 2 1/2 billion people on the planet in 1950, close to 7 billion now, do the maths.

[TrueMonolith]

The moon isn't geologically active, so I don't see why sub-surface would be warmer than the surface.

not geologically active on surface != geologically inactive.

[carmatic]

Another possibility that New Scientist magazine had an article on was setting up a base on Phobos, a moon orbiting Mars.

not to mention, we should also build another base on Deimos, so that we could run teleportation experiments between them... these bases would be comprised of 9 or 10 buildings, each with a specific function but more importantly, a single designated entrance and exit

these bases must also use red, yellow and blue keycards as security measures, where cards from one building cannot be used in another... and there should also be tons and tons of 'classified' rooms and passageways hidden behind walls.... and all doors open vertically, and there is an abundance of rising and lowering platforms

[peacemf]

we'll just have to look towards china to get it done now

[ylcard]

Now this is confusing, 08993 says that we should focus on space and planet colonization (is that right ? I know you didn't use those words, but that's what I got from you). How much money do you think will be needed to build a tiny base on Mars (or one of its moons) ? Wouldn't that money be better spent to ease our lives here ? Like research practical stuff.

Also, you can't escape death, I can't tell you when will be this population explosion, but it sure looks like it's going to happen in the future, but planets will die in the future, if we go out of our solar system we might even get blown up by some stray supernova or something as ridiculous. So yeah, you can fund trillions of dollars into Mars colonization (for example) but you'll suffer the same fate there as you would on Earth, in fact, do you really think it would be more efficient to live on an inhospitable planet than on an over-populated Earth ?

Unless we can invent some crazy technique and transform Mars into a planet that we can live on, we won't be going anywhere, considering you need to travel like 4 light years to the nearest star outside of our own solar system.

I'm really fascinated by space and stars and everything about it, but I really think that some of the "missions" are a waste of money (and time, which equals money anyway).

Now, I'm not trying to disprove any post here, there's obviously a lot I don't know, or just not aware of, so be patient with me :p

What technological advancement did we gain from staring at the stars ? (with Hubble, for example) Stuff that affects us in daily lives, not some crazy sci-fi idea, or something that might be realized in a billion years from now.

[ylcard]

Damn.. can't edit my own post.

I seem to strayed a bit with my ramblings.. what confused me about 08993's post is that he thinks we're doomed here, so we should move, but we're doomed everywhere, it's not like we'll ever change, if it's not over population, it'll be nuclear war, if it's not that then we'll exhaust our planet's resources, if not that then some epidemic will kill us all, or something else. We first need to develop the technology to travel light years in manageable time, then we need to focus on terraforming, then whatever else we'll need. But everything now sounds like it's taken from a video game, so how about we focus on Earth, if we're not ready.

[08993]

Damn.. can't edit my own post.

I seem to strayed a bit with my ramblings.. what confused me about 08993's post is that he thinks we're doomed here, so we should move, but we're doomed everywhere, it's not like we'll ever change, if it's not over population, it'll be nuclear war, if it's not that then we'll exhaust our planet's resources, if not that then some epidemic will kill us all, or something else.

Pretty much all of them wouldn't happen if we weren't all in the same place. We, like all other life forms are slaves to our environment.

We first need to develop the technology to travel light years in manageable time, then we need to focus on terraforming, then whatever else we'll need. But everything now sounds like it's taken from a video game, so how about we focus on Earth, if we're not ready.

Two points, first being we still need to spend the money to get ready or do you expect it to just appear from thin air? You mentioned Terraforming, that's space research.

Second being how exactly is throwing money at the planet going to stop anything? You seem to be full of objection yet you offer no solution, how very human of you.

[DrewJW]

Meh, plenty science in regard to space flight will being worked on behind closed doors :)

[Growled Member]

Now this is confusing, 08993 says that we should focus on space and planet colonization (is that right ? I know you didn't use those words, but that's what I got from you). How much money do you think will be needed to build a tiny base on Mars (or one of its moons) ? Wouldn't that money be better spent to ease our lives here ? Like research practical stuff.

It all depends. A lot of technology that we use in our daily lives came from the space program. A lot more could follow from developing technology that will take use to Mars. If you look at the amount of money that NASA spends, it's just a tiny fraction of the budget. It seems to me we've gotten our money back from them, something we can't say for every project.

[ylcard]

I don't want to come off as rude, but seriously, give me an example of such technology.

@08993,

I don't expect anything to appear from thin air, but I do have my opinion, and I think sending men to dig up holes on the Moon is pointless. I also think that researching the universe will yield no results, I might be wrong, there's a reason why I'm not in charge of anything, I'm not an expert, they are. But seriously, I can't think of anything good (and practical) coming out of studying some obscure binary star 18 light years away from us.

I don't get your point about terraforming, do you mean that it sounds ironic as I oppose all space research ? I don't.. you know.. I oppose waste of funds on stupid missions (stupid in my opinion, you might think they're mighty important).

How would throwing money at space stop anything ? It's not my intention to try and stop global warming, or whatever. I want people to focus on Earth and our current issues, like hunger, wars and diseases (and a million other things).

I don't want inventions that would make us rely on robots or anything like that.

And I resent that tone of yours "...yet you offer no solution, how very human of you.". I'm sorry for not being a bloody genius, if you have a solution to how to launch a shuttle using a microwave, go ahead, I'd go ahead and say that you don't have any solutions either, and that's fine, I didn't ask for one. I only gave my opinion about the direction NASA went on, I oppose it, you support it apparently (?).

Oh, and I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm mad at you, or that I'm angry, no hard feelings :)

[Growled Member]

I don't want to come off as rude, but seriously, give me an example of such technology.

According to the following site quite a bit.

http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/at_home.html