Re: Space Leaders Work To Replace Lunar Base With Manned Asteroid Missions

On Jan 26, 1:37 pm, Einar <eina...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 26, 12:16 pm, Michael Gallagher <mikejo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:20:27 -0800 (PST), Einar <eina...@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On Jan 23, 12:38 pm, Michael Gallagher <mikejo...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This bold new idea ain't so new, is it?

Hmm, not new in the sence never thought of before but perhaps new in
the sence never done before :)

Well, a Moon base has never been done before.  The Apollo crews were
up there for, at most, a couple of days, but stationing people up
there for weeks or months, never been done.  And if we're going to
send out Mars missions that will be on Mars for weeks or YEARS before
the planets line up for the return trip, maybe we should get a little
experience on that sort of things a little closer to home first.  Just
a thought.

I'm not AGAINST an asteroid mission; I just don't think that and a
lunar base have to be mutually exclusive, especially if we can use the
same hardware for both.  Using Orion to maintane spacecraft at the
Earth-Sun LaGrange points is also cool.  But to do all that and avoid
the Moon especially when other countries, like Japan, are taking an
interest in it, that makes no sense.  It could be a public relations
disaster for the president who goes for it.

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Yep, that´s my preference. To do a Moon base first. Get the experience
of the gritty type of actually being there. Once a robust space
precense is established within the Earth/Moon system, missions beyond
the Earth/Moon system, just about wherever and of whatever type, will
become far easier to accomplice.

Einar- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Not to make too much hay with all the vested R&D of those
who have become devotees to seeing their very own NASA
stovepipe architecture spun-off into a variety of moon and
mars loving technocracies, but there needs to be IMO more
of a focus on the EARTH-TO-ORBIT phase that might just
allow one or more (or even no) variations of the expanded
fairing, similarly pictured for the mars mission:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=9917&posts=24&start=1#NULL

Similarly, this would be just like what Boeing made available
as the "Payload Users Guide" for private industry (if anyone
could afford THAT kind of $$$ today, it would be a major
miracle). Now you can compare Boeing's "payload user's guide"
w/ Kistler's and find out that they're all just too expensive
for generating the interest that the Ares *would*, in comparison
to the others - but the SRB technology is just getting started,
and one doesn't need to put all their prospective eggs in one
basket, that is, if Ares turns out to be the same boondoggle that
all the others were.

NASA really needs to prove itself in the area of cheap earth-
to-orbit technology, which it can, if the political interests
of the compartmentalists could step aside, and let some
U.S. private interests buy some payload space w/ Ares SRB's.

What is an agency like NASA really seen as, with most or
all of beltway Washingtonians supporting their own compart-
mentalized versions of Ares-to-moon or Ares-to-mars
industries? Is this bureaucracy not a "block in the road"
towards a much more massive expedition FROM earth orbit?

To wit, Andrew Beal made us all aware of the potential danger
of a NASA with a quite subversive and dictatorial technocracy,
that made it almost impossible to fathom a civilian work force
dedicated as a public servant, for the good intentions of
a society who grew up being 'enamoured' with shows like
"Star Trek" or even "Buck Rogers".

It was Andrew Beal of Beal Aerospace who said:

"The BA-2C program was the largest privately funded program
ever in existence to build a large capacity space launch
system. Unfortunately, development of a reliable low cost
system is simply not enough to ensure commercial viability.
Several uncertainties remain that are totally beyond our
control and put our entire business at risk. The most
insurmountable risk is the desire of the U.S. government
and NASA to subsidize competing launch systems. NASA has
embarked on a plan to develop a "second generation"
launch system that will be subsidized by U.S. taxpayers and
that will compete directly with the private sector..."

... There will never be a private launch industry as long
as NASA and the U.S. government choose and subsidize launch
systems. While Boeing and Lockheed are private entities,
their launch systems and components are derivatives of
various military initiatives. Very little new effort takes
place without significant government subsidy, control, and
involvement. While we believed we could compete successfully
against the government subsidized EELV launch vehicles,
the characteristics and depth of subsidy for NASA's new
initiative as well as its ultimate performance are
impossible to determine or evaluate."

The whole point is, we're supposed to be attracting the
spirit of entrepreneuralism in order to open up the
earth-to-orbit field with something that can stir
private market potential, but politics, whether Republican
or Democrat, just gets in the way of what could be a
massive earth-to-orbit *push* for all of those space
enthusiasts, wherever they are. To put priorities on
whether "Moon or bust" or "Mars or bust" IMO, just
"compartmentalizes" a very important promise market
potential that really needs to be "freed up".

Imagine, what does a potential welfare state economy have
ANYTHING to do with providing a kind of intelligible work-
space for nearly half of 300 million and growing, eligible
job prospects, if we're just following the dictates of
a few hundred "mandarins" (ala Congress & Senate) with
respect to the continually "dissed" or "missed" opportun-
ities for massive promise market potential? A military
dictatorship is a fear based economy that oppresses
markets into subservience. Total subservience towards the
military industrial establishment turns a society inwards
towards infighting, ancestor worship, and blood wars. This
type of non-democratic Spartan-like society is controlled
by dictators and subordinates the freedom of expression,
esp. in literature, science, and communication.

A country of this kind of eleutherianism, or "freedom",
that cuts the "soldier" off from both society and family,
at the expense of a military industrial establishment, that
has grown completely blind to the consequences of its spend-
ing, must also war with those imperialist subjects, who
rationalize with their own ivory towers of accreditation,
their complete obeisance to either the political opposition,
or the "kingdom now" dominionist pirates, who illegally made
their own kind successful, who are the modern day tyrants of
this world. This system is definitely the *opposite* of what
the civil servant was supposed to represent, at least in my
day and age.

Now they will try to dictate a useless, unprofitable, black-
holed budget for the space program just because the military
does it also? No thanks, but I've more assured that it will
be someone else that gets "bought into" holding those near-
worthless Federal Reserve Notes, and it ain't going to
be someone that looks like your Aunt Fannie.

American
.

Relevant Pages

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