Re: Barack Obama Publishes His Space Policy

Fred J. McCall wrote:

:
:Even if you find a good cave (you have to FIND it first using
:robots), ...
:

Because obviously all of mankind is struck blind until robots can go
and do that job.


Humans can't do that job because they can't survive in the moon for weeks or months until the good cave is found!

Solar radiation and space radiation in the moon is very strong, enough to provoke cancers and blindness in astronauts if they live unprotected for weeks in a high radiation environment.

And this facts do not go away. To *find* those protected environments
you need to send robots because they do not need any life support and
they are radiation hardened. And if they "die" nobody cares a lot!

Only once the good protected environments are found and prepared can humans live for longer times. NASA is planning for a few days in the moon, and that is of course easy to do. Staying for months or years is completely another question, and that is what I am talking about.

:
:... you have to construct a whole environment for humans
:in that place:
:

And this is not hard to do if you actually jettison your ideology and
engage your brain.

:
:o air-tight so that humans can breathe.
:

Kevlar inflatable.


You can't inflate them anywhere! The slightest cosmic debris and all humans are dead. Please just THINK a bit instead of throwing slogans like that. You have to build an underground habitat that is not affected by space debris and offers radiation shelter. Kevlar inflatable can be used *inside* those protected holes/caves but not outside.

There is the problem of the temperature delta from day (150-200 degrees in sun bathed places to -150 at night. (Centigrade). Your Kevlar would explode if left in the sun for half lunar day (around 14 earth days)



:
:o with enough water and food so that humans can live for a
: while
:

Robots don't help with this. You're going to have to bring it with
you and recycle a lot.


It is obviously not only a matter of just bringing it in. You have to have a place underground to*store* those supplies that is thermally stable enough to hold water in liquid form for several months. Again, you can't do this in the surface because of the previously mentioned delta between day and night. To avoid freezing or vaporizing of water you need places where day/night temperatures stay within 0-100 degrees centigrade.

:
:o With enough "amenities" so that they do not go crazy:
: showers, waste disposal, communications, fuel, solar
: panels, and a big ETC!
:

And the robots don't help with all that, either. Again, you have to
bring it with you initially.


Yes, but then you have to install them, connect them, ensure they are working, test them for a while BEFORE humans arrive whose life depends on that equipment being functional.

:
:All that must be there BEFORE the humans arrive. Or you
:are seriously considering sending astronauts with shovels
:to the moon?
:

And once again your lack of intellectual integrity rears its ugly
head.


Obviously after you have found a good cave or you have blasted one with explosives you will need to arrange the cave, inflate the Kevlar, bring in the supplies, connect everything, test it, etc. And humans can't do it without another habitat that keeps them alive in the moon, so you need robots anyway.

:
:How they could survive when constructing
:the moon base if there is no moon base yet?
:
:It is obvious that sending construction workers to the
:moon in temporary habitats carried at great expense from
:earth is so silly nobody is seriously considering that.
:

That's right, nobody is, so why are you raising it as if someone is?


You.

:
:NASA, by the way, is not even considering a moon base
:at all.
:

Really? From a lack of intellectual integrity to outright lying in
one swell 'foop'.

http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061204_lunar-base.htm


That document speaks about... 2024!! There is not even a budget for that development, and the project rests on the possible collaboration of other nations. All this is just pipe dreams at the moment. But even
accepting that NASA has a plan I recommend you reading the link you
posted:

<quote>
The pro­posed “lu­nar ar­chi­tec­ture” calls for robotic pre­cur­sor mis­sions de­signed to sup­port the hu­man mis­sion, he added. Both the Glob­al Ex­plo­ra­tion Strat­e­gy and the moon base will be dis­cussed at a Space Ex­plo­ra­tion Con­fer­ence to be held this week at the George R. Brown Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in Hous­ton.
<end quote>


:
:>
:> :
:> :Radio delay to the moon is just 1 second, short enough to make
:> :very easy driving a robot there.
:> :
:> :> Not so much, no. Try walking across the room and examining objects
:> doing a 'step-look' sequence of a second for each one. See how long
:> just exploring the room takes.
:> :
:You get used to it in 1-2 hours practice.
:

It's not a matter of 'getting used to it'. It's a matter of 'you have
to move really slow because *** happens in much less than a second
and you can miss a lot otherwise'.


Yeah, I would not recommend robot races. But a speed of 6-10 Km:hour is
enough to get everything done.

:
:You just want to send people there, ...
:

Quite right, I do. If that's not the plan, why learn about the place?

:
:... and there is a lot of profit
:to be made (not by you of course) in doing that, that is
:why sending humans is proposed by certain people.
:

And your profit motive is what, precisely?

Sauce for the goose and all that, after all...

:
:Personally, I do not give a dam about some guys jumping around
:in the moon. I am interested in exploration and science.
:

Well, no, you aren't. You're against people going (exploration).

:
:I know, that is very old fashioned and not so "gee-whiz".
:But, as said, I do not care about people getting disappointed.
:

You know, they used to say "no bucks, no Buck Rogers". Each new
generation of idiots like you needs to learn that the converse also
applies - "No Buck Rogers, no bucks."

I hope you're very, very wealthy and can fund what you want on your
own, because if people aren't going you're going to find getting tax
money to do it is pretty much a non-starter.


Europe is pursuing robotic exploration without any investments in
human exploration besides the ISS.

ESA has now robots in
o Mars with Mars express
o Venus with Venus express
o Saturn with Cassini/Huygens (with NASA)
o Mercury mission planned for 2013
o Moon missions with several automatic probes

This demonstrates that you can build a space program based exclusively on robots.


Learn some history...



There is no history here. Nobody has ever went to those worlds. We are entering the future, and we will have to change our frame of mind. We will have to accept that space *is* different than everything we knew up to now.

We will have to accept the fact that our body has grown to be adapted to the surface of the earth for billions of year evolution and that we will need a lot of effort to make it live elsewhere. Robots can be built evolved for space right from the start. And in the first century of space exploration they will be the only ones to go to deep space, before we develop the technology to keep us alive in space.

--
jacob navia
jacob at jacob point remcomp point fr
logiciels/informatique
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~lcc-win32
.