18: went there. I was under the impression that it was generally accepted that the whole ‘spinoffs’ thing had been proven to be BS in terms of any sort of cost-benefit deal.
24: checked out the first few posts of the first link. So Stephen Hawking says we should head for space. BFD.
I’m not going to go through links and make anyone’s argument for them, as a rule; that’s more than I’d normally do without some quotes or statements in this thread, that the link is there to support and add detail to.
28: what of it? In the words of Howard the Duck, “Iris Raritan? Golly!! Who’s Iris Raritan??”
Well, yeah, but then you’re stuck with a moon base. And the moon isn’t all that great a place to live. There’s no air, no water, not much gravity, etc.
Like any building project, double the cost estimate and double the time estimate.
I guess it depends on what you want to do. If we’re going to expand into space, it makes infinite sense to hone the skills necessary for doing so on the moon where, if something goes wrong, help is only days away. It’s the next logical stepping stone since we have a permanent orbiting space station now.
I’m no fan of government space exploration, but if we’re going to do it, a moon base makes a lot of sense to me.
I think a moonbase would make more sense than the half-assed Internation Space Station. Of course there’s no way Nasa could pull it off without internation support. Even then given their track record I doubt they could keep up the commitment.
The type of technology required for actually being able to make successful colonies is going to be based on advances in basic science that NASA isn’t working on right now. We don’t need to make them 5% more efficient with the next generation of launcher, we need to make them 1000% more efficient.
If you really wanted to do that, I think the money would be better spent on basic chemistry, materials science, etc.
I think an apt analogy would be spending money on a glider program in 15th century Italy. Sure, Leonardo da Vinci can make you some pretty sketches and possibly even a fleet of working gliders, but spending money on incrementally better gliders won’t get you anywhere approaching a 747.
It’s better to spend the money on basic science to develop the knowledge and engineering to eventually build a 747 rather than the balsa wood glider version 7.0.
Exactly. Chemical rockets are never going to allow serious human colonization of any moon or planet, however desirable that end may be. And nobody’s managed to come up with a self-sustaining environment that someone could live in, let alone one that could be flown to another planet. I’m sure there are other hurdles as well. So for now, keep JPL and related projects, keep up with the unmanned probes and observatories that give us amazing new results, and keep funding basic research.
Manned space exploration is an end unto itself. We need frontiers to keep ourselves from stagnating, to give our children something to dream about and aspire to, and to give us a sense of shared accormplishment which helps bind our culture together.
NASA’s budget is about a quarter of the budget of the Department of Education. What exactly does the DOE accomplish? Why do we never propose curing cancer before cancelling the DOE? Is there any evidence at all that the DOE improves education? Were test scores worse before it was established? Were test scores worse before Bush increased the DOE’s budget by more than the entire budget of NASA? Is there any evidence that that increase in funding did any good whatsoever?
But as a kid, I studied harder in school because I wanted to be an astronaut. I remember gathering with the class in front of TVs to watch the Apollo landings. Our science teachers made science cooler by using space missions as examples.
The U.S. space program pays other dividends as well. For example, it gives the world a positive image of the U.S. to counter the negative one they get in other ways. It’s great PR. It gives Americans a sense of pride in their country which helps bind it together. It gives us hope for the future, and a sense of exciting possibilities and adventures to come.
NASA, for all its faults, is the best-spent money in the U.S. government’s budget.
So why are we abandoning the space station as soon as our contractual obligations are complete? Is a moon base any more useful than an orbital one? I don’t see it.
So here we sit, posting in a global forum, using technology barely imaginable in 1960. Each of us sits at a device containing litterally more transistors (tens of millions) that existed world wide in 1960. We communicate with each other, using words, pictures and links to other media, (sounds, video) with near effortless speed. the magic is that we take it for granted. A LOT of this technology came out of the NASA Appolo program, either directly or indirectly.
So what nearly unimaginable things will our grandchildren have as spin offs of the technology that could come from a dedicated, global moon base program? The technology of lifter/booster improvement itself suggests many possibilities, especially in the better and more efficient use of energy, right here on earth. Low and zero gravity access gives us advances in metalurgy, chemistry and many other disciplines.
A moon base is NOt an objective in itself, it is a seed, the infant of an idea…
“What use is a baby?” _ Robert Heinlein
Regards
FML
Perhaps we should not ask ourselves “what do we get from building a moon base,” but rather “if we fail at building a moon base now, do we ruin any later chances at trying again?”
Cause all we need is 5 people to die in some tragic space wreck, and all future hope is lost. (at least for several decades)