I consider it a national disgrace that we do not have a functioning base on the Moon today and be well on the way to exploring Mars.
According to your timeline, when are we supposed to have developed a hyper drive?
What’s the latest research on microgravity and its effects on the aging process? If it’s beneficial, i.e. the elderly gain X years of life if living in LEO vs living in 1G, then I can see that as a potential market for permanent habitation in space. One thing about medical care, the demand is very inelastic.
I cynically think that manned space exploration won’t continue to develop until one group of people use manned spacecraft to dominate another group of people militarily.
Damn it. We have to wait until the Borg show up before we really take space exploration seriously.
With today’s technology, it would cost approximately one millions dollars a pound to soft-land anything on the moon. One. Million. Dollars. A pound.
Crazy question.
Could a space shuttle assuming properly oriented thrusters are present set down vertically on Mars and take off again without using a metric shitload of fuel?
Gravity is only 38% of earth so I was wondering if a properly kitted shuttle could fly from ISS to mars and back. Even if it took months coasting to save fuel.
Other than cutting it off from Earth how would an asteriod or comet impact effect a space colony? I grant you that if we had the technology & infrastructure to build self-sustaining space colonies we’d probally also have the ability to detect and destroy/deflect anything (at least of natural origin) heading toward Earth. To protect agains solar flairs we’d need to locate colonies in orbit around other planets like Mars (or just settle on Mars). Nothing short of interstellar colonization will protect our species if the Sun goes nova. Obviously if we can’t even manage to set up colonies in our own solar system that’s out of the question. Even it’s is possible that’s something at least a couple centuries in the future, possibly millenia.
So we we get to spend even more money keeping old people alive? 
After we put a man on the moon as JFK promised there was no need for NASA. We wasted enough money on space junk when we could be helping people.
If you ever get to Houston drive through the Friendswood area that was built for NASA people. You will see manicured mansions. Now the party is over. NASA people can’t find jobs, and the ones they are finding are substantially less money. The everyday people who are from that area have had to put up with spoiled, arrogant NASA people for years - now comes the leveling process.
As someone in the movie The Right Stuff said, “No big bucks, no Buck Rogers.” I say welcome to the real world join the struggle.
The basic concept in a nutshell: take a cylindrical stretched polyethylene terephthalate (Melinex or Mylar) that is 2 km in diameter when inflated, fill it with molecular nitrogen at just enough pressure to inflate it, and then slowly spin it on its longitudinal axis while wrapping some kind of reinforcing fiber lightly around it. Next, you blow a mix of water vapor and short fiber silica on the inside symmetrically as it rotates until you get at least a 10m thick layer. After that, you coat the inside with an insulating layer of some porous substance, like foamed concrete or silica slag, then fill the interior with water to at least a 30m depth. Once you’ve done this, you put buoyant islands floating inside (they can be free floating, but you probably want some kind of tensile structure between them to maintain spacing) and fill with air at least 12 psi. For light, you place a large Cassegrain solar collector at one end (which also shields the habitat from direct sunlight and radiation-induced vaporization) and reflect the light down a fiber optic array, which distributes light to maintain a suitable schedule for habitation and agriculture.
This has a number of advantages over any other proposal I’ve seen for a large, self-sustaining habitat:
Protection: the mass of the structure provides protection from radiation, impact, and other normal hazards. 30 meters of water is the equivalent protection provided by the atmosphere at about a mile of altitude; in other words, about as much exposure to ionizing solar and cosmic radiation as you would get from living in Denver. The structure is robust enough to survive impact from micrometeors, and a very high velocity object will cleanly punch through the outer crust by design, and then be slowed by the water; the leakage should be small, and self-sealing, providing a robust capability against threats that is nearly equal to terrestrial hazard from meteor objects. For larger objects, if the hazardous object cannot be deflected, you simply move the trajectory of the habitat; as a last ditch defense, you could actually vent the atmosphere through a converging/diverging nozzle to generate thrust. While the 1-2 psi that could be vented won’t be especially efficient, the large volume of propellant and the ability to achieve a large expansion ratio can provide enough impulse to change the orbit sufficient to effect a miss. The solar collector could also potentially be used to heat the fluid in a pre-divergence thrust chamber to augment the effective impulse.
Stability: The size and mass of the habitat tend toward both mechanical and thermodynamic stability. There is enough inertia and thermal mass that no small disturbance or even loss of active control is going to cause an immediate catastrophic failure. The use of a large mass of cold water helps to normalize heat distribution and also provides a hydrological cycle (evaporation and deposition or precipitation of water). In theory, once a habitat has been constructed and supplied it could operate autonomously for years without external resources owing to the sheer size of the system, even with relatively low resource recovery efficiencies. The structure, being primarily an amorphous water ice matrix containing liquid water, is self-repairing to normal wear and external damage due to puncture. Any fractures will tend to flow closed and fuse due to internal pressure rather than propagate as they would in a crystalline solid (provided the tensile hoop loads are taken mostly by the reinforcement fiber). Basically, the habitat is self-maintaining on daily or weekly timescales, and should require a only a moderate amount of effort to maintain.
Expansion: By releasing the reinforcement fiber and adding water/silica to the inside, you can allow the outer shell to slowly grow, and then stop it by adding reinforcement (although you’d want to do this iteratively for safety and controllability). More water can be added to raise the “sea level”, or additional islands added for more real estate. Circulation of water currents can be directed or controlled by altering levels of salinity or introducing hydrologic features into the wall.
Resource requirements: Since most of the materials in the habitat are essentially elemental raw materials (water, oxygen, nitrogen, silicates) that are readily available in space, the need for manufactured materials in the structure is minimal. Aside from the initial balloon, carbon fiber, and light collector, the only other terrestrial equipment that need be transported to space are whatever machines you need to perform the handling processes. This isn’t trivial—it is basically equivalent to setting up a major construction site in orbit—but far less than having to haul pieces of a station up piece by piece and bolt, weld, or otherwise connect them together with manual labor.
What function would a “functioning” Moon base have, especially given the problems of operating on the lunar surface: Impact of Dust on Lunar Exploration
There is no research on the microgravity effect of aging on humans. There are plenty of other medical studies on physiological response to free-fall environments on both test animals and human beings, and nearly all of it indicates a surfeit of problems, from disorientation and weakening of cardiac muscle and skeletal systems to basic problems eating, burping, and excreting. For a good non-technical summary of this, see Mary Roach’s Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. Basically, free-fall is an invalid or caretaker’s worst nightmare.
Perhaps, but so far the Air Force has found very little application for a manned spacecraft that wasn’t readily superseded by unmanned capability (the X-20 and Manned Orbiting Laboratory for surveillance satellites, antipodal bombers for ICBMs, et cetera). The same objections that apply to manned exploration also apply, if not more so, to military missions; there is just too damned much effort involved in keeping people alive while trying to accomplish something useful.
This is an argument made by people who are ignorant of what benefits have been provided by space programs, both in terms of scientific and practical knowledge, particularly with regard to climate observation and telecommunications. It also ignores the fact that the funding for federal welfare programs exceeds spending for the entire space program in the 2001-2010 timeframe by a factor of over 25:1, and even larger prior to enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. It seems that “we” have spent plenty of money helping people to apparently little effect, while the money that “we” have spent on space research and exploration, while sometimes squandered on programs of questionable scientific merit, has expanded human knowledge and ability dramatically, and provided a real and measurable stimulus to high tech manufacturing and technology development.
Stranger
[POST=7560775]Could the Space Shuttle reach lunar orbit? Mars? Pluto?[/POST]
[POST=6436578]Could the Space Shuttle go to the Moon?[/POST]
and
Feasibility Analysis of Cislunar Flight Using the Shuttle Orbiter
Stranger
Never is a really long time. It stands to reason that there will be something sooner or later, but given all the constraints that the people above have mentioned, it seems that there needs to be a really strong impetus to go into space. So, what is likely to happen in my opinion, is that nothing will happen until there is another space race or the costs go down dramatically.
I think, actually, that the skyscrapers of New York is a good example of this situation. While there is a need for them there, due to the limited land, there is still a premium for building higher. In New York, at least, this comes out to maximal profit at a building height of around 500 feet. But there are many buildings that are taller, including the tallest in the city, the Empire State Building, which in many ways was built specifically to be taller than the Chrysler Building. It was the tallest building in the city for fifty years or so. But it seems that the general height of the tallest buildings in new York is creeping slowly higher, and eventually the Empire State will not stand out too much. This is just so much verbiage to say that the space race was like this, in that there was huge impetus to go into space in the 60s, and eventually it seems that there will be that impetus again.
(I’m still posting this, even though as I reread it, it isn’t really clear. In any case, I hope you can make sense of it.)
Oh, and if Kessler syndrome bears out, it seems that nothing, human or robot, will be able to get in the space, at least in one piece, in the not too distant future.
Demand is only inelastic when people are spending somebody else’s money. If all forms of public or private medical insurance were sudenly outlawed, we’d see a completely different marketplace than we do today.
For the 10-20% (WAG) of Americans with actual medical problems and no insurance, that day is already here. And their demand for medical care is very far from inelastic.
Thanks, Stranger, for that description. Interesting how a watery archipelago of islands has certain properties – extendibility, etc. – one wonders if some anthropologist or geographer has observed anything interesting along those lines somewhere on Earth (the chinampas of the Valley of Mexico come to mind).
Get going on those pics, though! 
First step on the road to establishing colonies on other planets. To do so would require considerable technology, which would have to be built on more primitive technology. We’re in the coracle stage of space exploration, but it needs to be done in order to eventually get off the planet.
I recently read a science fiction author who said he had thought we were living in the Columbus era of space exploration. But it turned out we were in the the Leif Ericson ear.
Maybe the inhabitants of the moon will hold a big ceremony in 2269 and put up a plaque at the site where Apollo 11 landed to celebrate the 300th anniversary. And the plaque will be written in Mandarin so local schoolchildren can read it.
I see this argument advanced quite often, but it is never followed with a compelling reason for why we have to leave this planet. For a small fraction of what it would cost to establish colonies on other planets we could solve the problems that are the result of humans shitting in their own nest.
Asimov wrote a good essay on the subject, but basically we need a backup of the human race in case of planet killer asteroids, and such like.
I think you’re overestimating how much a colony in space would cost and severely underestimating how much it would cost to solve all the problems we have here on Earth.
Oh, I don’t think so, and I don’t want to send the thread into Great Debates territory, but I still don’t see the point of space colonies. We don’t have to solve all the problems on Earth, just the ones that are ruining us. Get our population and carbon footprint under control. That is doable, and will benefit billions, rather than a few “lucky” colonists. I won’t be buying a ticket for the off-world colonies anyway. I like it here.
Ah the old chestnut about if we give up space exploration then all of the money will automatically go to helping the underpriveleged and Greening the world.
The common quote is that it cost the American population the equivalent of a packet of cigarettes each to put a man on the Moon.
Apart from the fact that throwing money at problems doesn’t necessarily even ameliorate them, let alone solve them,
(Look at the tens of Billions given in aid to Sub Saharan Africa over many years with little or no impact on the poverty there)
the money in all likelyhood be spent on something like the military, or even more likely evaporate altogether on tax breaks and minor, vote winning projects.
And don’t forget, to get a Global solution to Global problems its going to need a majority of the worlds nations to not just agree to participate in this noble venture, but for them all to agree on how its to be funded and how its to be implemented in practice.
This means your Congo’s and your Irans, and your Libyas all forgetting their own internal and external problems and long term goals cooperating with all of your Chinas and Russias and N.Koreas aswell as the Westen Liberal democracies.
And in the incredibly unlikely event that that actually happened, its still a slim possibility that your plan would work.
Manned space exploration WILL continue under the aegis of China, Japan and India, though I suspect Irans so called desire to participate is as a cover for developing long range weapon delivery systems.
They are probably not carrying out their space programmes for the ultimate good of all mankind, or even for reasons of national prestige, but because they know that though it will be a long road (and not inexpensive), it will pay off enormously in resources, power, industry and world influence when they finally reach their goal .
And on their journey they will almost certainly benefit hugely from the new science that will be a byproduct of their programmes.
Of course the converse is that the U.S. will be relegated to something of a backwater in future world decision making.
I hope you enjoy that pack of cigarettes.