Re: Space exploration for the rest of us

jacob navia wrote:
Fred J. McCall wrote:

jacob navia <jacob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:Jeff Findley wrote:

:3) Even a small "moon base" project requires an enormous expense.
: You have to send HEAVY equipment to excavate the moon base
: and bury it underground. If not, you have to evacuate the
: moon base at each solar flare, and if you are unlucky, the
: astronauts are killed when trying to reach earth.

Ever been to Kansas? They have these things called tornado cellars.
You see, everyone knows that Kansas is uninhabitable because it is so
hard to build a house that will withstand a tornado. And yet, oddly
enough, people manage to survive in Kansas just fine.

The same approach works just fine on the moon. You just need enough
heavily shielded space for people to take shelter in during solar
storms. The rest of the time they can go live in their houses and
grow wheat ... uh, go live in the main base and do their jobs.


That was what I am saying. You have to bury yourself to
protect from radiation. This is (of course) VERY easy to do.

You have to transport heavy machinery to the moon to do the
holes in the ground, then transport the housing equipment
and there you are, you have your moon base.

This means that you must design a earth-moon transporter, i.e.
a vehicle for transporting heavy equipment to the moon,
you have to design the equipment, you have to test it, package it,
transport it to the moon, send big crews to unpack it,
work with it, etc etc. Those crews will not have any
shelter so better they avoid solar storms if not they
get fried.


Solar storms aren't happening 24/7, or Apollo (done near the peak of the sunspot cycle, at that) would not have been possible, either.

And, of course, that risk exists only half the time. The Sun is below the horizon, the other half. Quite a bit can be done in 14 days of no-Sun.

Oh, and has it not occured to you (this isn't my idea either, I've seen it proposed DECADES ago) that this 'earth' moving equipment could also be operated remotely, getting most of the work done before a crew even arrives?

Even the 'Mars Direct' approach involves fuel-generating equipment to be operated remotely on Mars, and no crews committed to launch until we know things are ready....and that this same technology will also support an unmanned sample return mission.


I am not saying that this is impossible. Just that the
current plans provide not the slightest HINT that something
like this (building of a space infrastructure) is at all
in the works.


Perhaps you've not looked in the right places for its beginnings.

It won't spring fully-formed from the forehead of Zeus, any more than Cassini could have been done the day after Explorer-1.

I was born several years before the first satellite. Trust me, even DECADES go by pretty quickly.


:4) Space radiation is deadly without adequate shielding. A moon
: base project needs to get completely underground.

Poppy***! This is the same as your 3) and the same answer applies.


Yes, and the same problems that I explained apply here too!


:5) Since artificial gravity is impossible in the moon, we
: are assuming that bone loss does NOT happen in moon gravity
: what is probably FALSE.

Who told you artificial gravity was impossible on the moon? Hell, you
can generate artificial gravity here on Earth. Just build a track
banked for a 2-g turn, hop in your car, and voila - 2 g artificial
gravity.


Nice. Well, nothing is impossible, it is just that to do that
in the moon that track must be underground, and the hole must be big
enough to hold a track + associated equipment. This is as (3) above
not impossible but absolutely not planned and at the moment just
a sheer phantasy.


It's simpler than that. NASA has already designed small centrifuges for crew conditioning for Mars ships...no reason they couldn't be used on the Moon, either.


:6) Any serious planetary exploration is impossible since humans
: are unfit for the trip, not to mention to withstand the
: harsh conditions in the target planet. All known planets are
: utterly hostile to human life. Yes, this can be solved by
: artifical gravity+shielding but the mass of the spaceship becomes
: staggering. Thousands of tons at least.

Ridiculous assertion. And if things are as bad as you say, cancel
space science. If we're not going we don't need it.


Well, I have a different view of science and exploration. I am
not the "gee whiz" type of person, I do not like TV shows, but
I do like the sheer beauty of exploration, of discovery that only
science can give.

BTW, how are you imparting all this to the general public, execpt via 'TV shows?'

Hubble is fairly popular among the non-space geek public, because it's an *optical* instrument. It takes often grand images of cosmic phenomena that Joe Average can identify with...

...will he care as much about less visually stimulating science as geology (I'm sorry, it's just rocks to some people. Even those pieces of the Moon that we actually *have* here.), the location of the heliopause,the conditions on the surface of Venus or in the atmosphere of Jupiter? Hell, they didn't care about Pluto, until it got reclassified, but how many average folk even know about New Horizons, well enroute to learn more about whatever we're calling Pluto today?

You ned to understand that you're preaching to the choir about the desirability and need for basic space research, but what you call exploration for ALL of us, MOST people out there know little, and care about as much.

*I* have been a space geek since childhood. But I learned early on that most of my peers wern't and still aren't like me.

Trust me, even when a robotic probe fails, every news report will note the malfunction of the "'x' billion dollar space probe," as if its cost were part of its name.

Space exploration, with or without people is an uphill battle. Never assume that the taxpayers will be as supportive of, or interested in machines as in humans.

Yet more reason to create at least a decent Earth-to-LEO transportation infrastructure. For the same money, you can send more robots *or* people.


:No one, neither NASA nor anyone else has any solution for this problems
:yet. Those are REAL showstoppers.

Hogwash! Again, anyone willing to apply a little thought can start
down the road to solutions to your "REAL showstoppers".

If they're indeed "REAL showstoppers", then let's stop the show. Shut
down NASA and the entire space science budget. It will never be
useful because going is impossible.


Who cares about going "in person". We have our machines, that can
transport our eyes and hands.



And just how much work have you actually done remotely? Espically with large speed-of-light delays? Having no one present makes even the initial *landing* a time when prayer might be appropriate, if one is so inclined.

Apollo 11 was heading for 'a football field-sized crater full of boulders' on its own. The pilot simply extended his approach, and landed beyond.


Instead of sending all this TONS of equipment to the moon, we
can send a rover that will gather the same data, discover the SAME
things as a human, and do it for 1/1000 of the cost. The distance
to the moon is so small, that you can drive a vehicle in real
time from earth. The time-lag is just 2 seconds. So you would be able
to control that vehicle very finely, without any risks to you.

The moon base could be setup NOW at costs approx 1 billion.
True Lockheed Martin would earn much less, (probably nothing)
since there is no need to develop anything. Just use some
rocket already built, JPL to build the rover, and you are all
set. Energy is plenty in the moon, solar panels would give
much more than in Mars,


For 14 days, anyway...


> no wind or dust in the atmosphere to
cope with,


Atmosphere, no. But Lunar dust will be an issue, no matter *what* you send, unless it lands and never has to move again.


> no seasons, a robot could be operational for
a decade without any problems. You put a dozen of those
and you can explore the moon without any problems.

WHY DO WE NEED TO SEND HUMANS?


WHY DON'T WE DO IT ON EARTH?


--

Frank

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