Alright, so from what I understand Newt said that he'd be moving money away from the dead NASA Space Shuttle Program into the private sector to push them towards going to the moon on their own.

As it stands American astronauts have to hitch a ride with Russian causmonauts to get up there at close to 20mill a pop. And we're still doing other satellite and probe stuff, just not shipping up our own shuttle.

Now, I'm really in favor of going to space, and I think that we really need to for a few reasons.
1: People need a real goal. Something to urge them on to do something greater. And I see Space as a vision of the future that we need.
2: Technology. We've made some great strides with technology, I want to see that shit put to use in space! Not to mention the new technologies that can be made for that?
3: I know that the economy is somewhat in the Not Good region right now. But I do think that businesses working towards something as lofty as the moon might give some real kick to the economy.

SO my main issue is i it is going to be Public or Private, Government or Business. My problem is if this ever, by some random happenstance, should come about that companies will just claim they're doing something for space to get tax cuts or funding and then channel it elsewhere. Not that the government doesn't have a lot of experience doing that itself, but frankly, businesses tend to do it better.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out there and see what people thought. Do you support the idea of government base on the moon or should it be by businesses? Or not at all. Agree with the points above or not. I want to know!

What are you talking about? I already have a moon base, it's on the Dark Side of the moon. I'm next door neighbors with Dracula. He's an alright dude, but his parties kind of suck.

Let's take a blast to the moon, baby
I sit around wishing you well

Tags: Tanya Armstrong

Clearly a wise investment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv6RbEOlqRo

Tawanos said:
Alright, so from what I understand Newt said that he'd be moving money away from the dead NASA Space Shuttle Program into the private sector to push them towards going to the moon on their own.

Which is the same thing Bush started after the Columbia accident, and which Obama kicked into high gear.

SpaceX, founded by one of Paypal's co-founders, Elon Musk, is working towards certification of its Dragon Capsule that will be the first privately-operated, human-spaceflight-capable capsule in the world. I believe they've already inked a deal with NASA on leasing some of the launch sites at Cape Canaveral.

So this bit that Newt is proposing is nothing new, and it would never happen anyway because the last thing any serious GOP candidate is going to bally about in the general election is an increase, anywhere, in government spending while the rabid Tea Party has any kind of sway in national politics.


With regards to the American's perception of space, probably the only thing that would even stand a chance of rekindling that fire we had back in the 60's would be a real effort to go to Mars. People don't seem to be too excited about the moon because we already did that...and people are tired of bases or research stations. Asteroids just don't carry that much interest, either, or they become prey to endless jokes about Armageddon and Bruce Willis.

In terms of who would fund such a venture, only government can make the initial investment. Shareholders of any sane corporation wouldn't touch something as experimental as a manned moon base with a 10-ft pole. Only once government proves that the venture can be commercialized...then do the corporations show up. That's what is happening now with Virgin Galactic offering the space tours, based off of Burt Rutan's work, and SpaceX on hauling humans to the ISS, following in Russia and NASA's footsteps.

So as much as I'd love to see a real investment in human space exploration (of ANY kind -- where is Voyager 3 and Voyager 4??), given the fact Obama doesn't even seem to give it a second thought, and the GOP candidates would only use it to get votes in NASA states, I do not foresee anything major happening until the early 2020's, if not mid to late 2020's. We're building our own heavy-lift rocket right now, but all the political back-and-forth has sent that back to the drawing board several times. We're even lucky we still send robots off to Mars at random. I am surprised more noise wasn't made over the fact that Curiosity carried a small nuclear reactor as a fuel source, especially after Fukushima.


Compare a moon base to the facilities we (and many other nations) maintain down in Antarctica. How often are those mentioned in the news? I'm surprised we still fund those expeditions. I guess since Antarctica isn't controlled by any major power, and no Rep or Senator has any sway over it, it's been left alone.

Great post.

I feel the appropriate response to this issue should be "all your base are belong to us".

So last night while walking to the movie theater, we looked up and saw the moon as a sliver, and it reminded my roommates and I of the Cheshire Cat's smile. Having noticed this, we determined it would be awesome to have not one, but two big moon colonies, positioned in such a way that when the moon was revealing only a smiling sliver, that they would form two great big glowing eyes.

I think space exploration is super important and awesome, because of the scientific knowledge we gain as well as the indirect benefit we get from inspiring future scientists and engineers.

Shuttle launches are some of my earliest memories and were a huge inspiration to me. So read everything I say knowing I'm coming from that perspective.

Tawanos said:
As it stands American astronauts have to hitch a ride with Russian [cosmonauts] to get up there at close to 20mill a pop. And we're still doing other satellite and probe stuff, just not shipping up our own shuttle.

The first thing to know is that almost no useful science has or ever will emerge from sending people into low Earth orbit. And the few things we can discover, we have already.

I mean, think about it. Low Earth orbit is just a few hundred miles up into space. That's less than the distance from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_Earth_orbit

The Hubble was a spectacular success, aided by space shuttle missions. But relatively speaking, low Earth orbit -- where the Hubble is -- is an awful place from which to look at space. It's much better than doing it from ground level, but low Earth orbit is still well inside the Earth's magnetic field. Heck, it's barely out of the atmosphere.

Contrast with the James Webb space telescope which would orbit 1.5 million miles away! http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

So I don't see our current manned spaceflight situation as a problem that needs fixing.

Tawanos said:
Alright, so from what I understand Newt said that he'd be moving money away from the dead NASA Space Shuttle Program into the private sector to push them towards going to the moon on their own.

This is problematic because... budgetarily, this money... doesn't exist?

I mean, there's not a huge pile of money sitting around dormant. NASA's funding has been slashed year after year and they're doing all the science they can with every penny they have.

So, let's be clear: moving money away from NASA means moving money away from NASA's current and future projects/ and not the dead shuttle program.

Tawanos said:
But I do think that businesses working towards something as lofty as the moon might give some real kick to the economy.

I don't know. I'm actually in favor of government stimulus, as unfashionable as it may be, but this seems like an extremely narrow sort of economic stimulus.

I guess it depends on what we think the goal of space exploration ought to be.

I don't think colonizing other planets makes much sense. Fundamentally, I can't even see how that would ever be self-sustaining, and it seems like such a horrible future for humanity - like, living under a dome on Mars in the middle of a cold barren wasteland under a dim, distant sun? Fuck that. Just about anything good about us as a species is tied to this rock we're living on now.

What about the Moon as a potential energy source or mining operation? Maybe, but it feels like we're hundreds of years away from being able to profitably bring resources back to the Earth from the Moon. The amount of energy required to launch something out of Earth orbit is insane and it's hard to imagine how we'd ever make that profitable with our current launch technology.

As long as we're launching shit into space by burning several hundred pounds of rocket fuel for every pound of spaceship we're launching, none of this is very feasible.

The physics of sending stuff into space is awful. It requires soooo much energy. And the brutal part is that you need so much rocket fuel, that you burn a shitload of rocket fuel just to get the other rocket fuel up there. And then that rocket fuel weighs even more so you need even more fuel and... sorry. It's a losing proposition.

That's the next problem to solve as far as any kind of manned space exploration is concerned. Space elevators, space slingshots, launching spaceships with nuclear blasts, something. Anything but burning rocket fuel.

Building a moon base would ruin us financially. We really don't have the resources to do anything meaningful with it.

Lord_BullGod said:
Let's take a blast to the moon, baby
I sit around wishing you well

Tags: Tanya Armstrong

How I'm craving youuuu!

<3 Sergio. Best Bootycon.

Cognac Jack said:
Building a moon base would ruin us financially. We really don't have the resources to do anything meaningful with it.

In all seriousness....I kind of wonder how feasible a moon base prison would be.

Space moons? I need to get nategri back to this forum.

Regardless, there's one thing we do know.

Women of the future will make the Moon a cleaner place to live.

from: http://boingboing.net/2012/01/28/space-age-lestoil-ad.html

Image: 768x1024 JPG, 145KB. Click to view.

The insurance for private space exploration would also be a bit prohibitive. It might be more fun to see the development of mass drivers to launch stuff into space, or orbital elevators. And those could be powered slowly by various renewable resources

(somehow this conversation reminds me of robot alchemical drive)

i think Newt would make a great emperor of Zardon, and Romney would make an awesome Admiral in the Galaxy Fleet Command.

Yeah and Santorum should be put in charge of a penal colony located in the rings around Uranus

I'm baaaaaaack! (Blame LeeChan).

I am about as pro human space exploration as you can get. That said: Fuck ISS, and fuck the Moon. Mars, baby. Mars Mars Mars Mars Mars. We've arguably had the technology to get there since the 70s, and it is just wayyyy overdue for a visit.

And Mars is something the Moon can never be: A complete, living world. And one with a rich geologic, hydrologic and maybe even (?!?!) biological history.

John Booty said:
...living under a dome on Mars in the middle of a cold barren wasteland under a dim, distant sun? Fuck that. Just about anything good about us as a species is tied to this rock we're living on now.

With all respect: Nope. Everything that makes humans great as a species is tied to us being able to transcend boundaries. We do language, we do math, we bootstrap vast intelligent networks, and we don't the fuck stay on the rock that evolved us.

And while living in a pressurized box on a dusty dry plain might not sound like fun to everyone, there are definitely more than enough who are willing to go.

As far as specifics, I think our best shot would be a be a Mars To Stay type program, which would colonize the planet in one go. Basically you pick a few dozen people who don't mind living on Mars permanently, whip them off to the Red Planet with some supplies (more sent as needed), and enjoy all the money you saved by not having to retrieve them (at least immediately - which is the expensive part!). Then sit back and let the sweet, sweet humanity-enriching science roll in.

Last I checked this kind of thing would cost on the order of 10 billion dollars (and, yes, I'm using 'order' in that tricky math way here). And that's actually, um, not that much money. If governments don't step up, all it's going to take is a few top tier billionaires who want to make a name for themselves in the history books.

I want to be on the team in the first Mars mission, ala Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Shit part is, I'm definitely too old.

I would settle for some dedicated lab space on the moon though.