[QUOTE=ftg]
Jinx does have a valid question though. Why is Bush so hot on a lunar base in order to ramp up for a manned mission to Mars? If you’re doing a major mission to Mars, going to and then leaving the moon is a major economic waste. It makes no sense.
People who study what’s been going on in Washington in recent years deduce the following:
- Most of NASA’s current projects don’t put money in the pockets of The Right People.
- Ergo, those projects have to be cancelled and new projects started, with the contracts for the new projects routed to The Right People.
- The lunar base is the goal. (Well, the pretend goal.) No one expects a manned Mars mission project to continue to receive funding once there is a new administration. But the funding for the preliminaries for the Moon base will have already been locked in.
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Okay, now it’s my turn to :rolleyes:.
First of all, the notion that “NASA’s current projects don’t put money in the pockets of The Right People” is absurd. In fact, under the CEV program, the money is going to continue to go to most of the same people who currently run the Shuttle program; ATK (which makes the Shuttle SRBs and will make the CEV booster stack and heavy lift vehicle) and Boeing (which is half of the United Space Alliance, the company that runs the Shuttle operations and is half of the Boeing-Northrop Grumman team that is proposing on CEV) or Lockheed (the other half of USA). The biggest change is that either Lockheed wins the contract for CEV (unlikely) and Boeing loses a bit of business, or the Boeing-Northrop Grumman team wins (likely) and Lockheed squeals like a pig until someone inevitably stuffs a chunk of fat in their mouths. The STS program was carefully designed–and I mean that in a political rather than technical sense–to provide jobs for people in virtually every state; CEV will be the same if not moreso.
It’s largely true that a manned Lunar base as a preparatory step for a Mars mission is a waste–arguments that it allows us to develop necessary technology or whatever aside–because its clear that CEV isn’t going to offer anything like the capability for manned interplanetary travel. There is, in the current proposal requirements, nothing that indicates any need for extended duration (multi-month) missions, nor will the system that will satisfy proposal requirements be adequate as a basis to scale up from. Whatever kind of vessel will be (in hopeful eventuality) used for manned interplanetary exploration, it will be fundamentally different from anything developed for the CEV contract.
So what is the reason for a cislunar mission, plans for a lunar base, et cetera? Quite simply, this all came about after the Chinese announced their plans for space exploration, and then made credible efforts in that direction. Although their schedule is overly ambitious, it is entirely likely that they’ll launch their proposed space platform and will attempt a lunar mission, and the US doesn’t want to be shamed into admitting that they can’t do the same. To this end, we’ve undercut decades-long unmanned missions (mostly helmed out of JPL) in favor of an ill-advised crash effort to repeat Apollo.
As for Mars, that’s just grandiose jabber. Reagan mouthed the same words, and with just as little lack of resolve on following through. By the time humans land on Mars (if ever) they’ll be using something other than chemical rockets for propulsion and will have developed adequate technologies for indefinite survival in space rather than flying in a cramped cannister. And there are good odds that they won’t be carrying an American flag. But the serious goal in interstellar expansion shouldn’t be to Mars, but rather to a near Earth asteroid, which could be exploited for its mineral resources.
As for the OP’s question, the Apollo lunar missions landed in a vary narrow range of near equatorial sites and explored only a few square kilometers in the most superficial manner. We have very little idea what most of the exposed surface of the Moon is like, much less what lies a few meters under the lunar regolith. Aside from the exploitation potential, this provides a much better understanding of the formation and evolution of planetary bodies and is useful in that regard. It certainly isn’t “the brainchild of GW Bush,” who wouldn’t know a basic science text if it were written in single syllable letters, and you’d be well advised to perform the minimal amount of research (i.e. Google something like “moon mission impact water”) which would have offered all of the salient details of the topic at hand.
Stranger
