WP: NASA Plans Lunar Outpost

[kskiska]

Permanent Base at Moon's South Pole Envisioned by 2024

Tuesday, December 5, 2006; A01

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars. The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travelers headed onward, and would provide not only safe haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel.

NASA officials declined to put a price tag on what will clearly be an extremely expensive venture. But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

If the project goes ahead as planned, it would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/04/AR2006120400837.html

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Oh bullshit.

Like we have money for that crap. Instead the high frontier folks will build space platforms to chuck rocks down on asia.

[minnesota_liberal]

7. Same goes for the plan to send humans to Mars

Any money spent on developing renewable and alternative fuels is better spent than on this.

[Duppers]

28. agreed, but

it's NASA that comes up with most of our usable technology. Why can't the govt. just put money into improving things without having some excuse, but that's the way it's been happening.

[AndyTiedye]

10. There'd Be Plenty of Money for Space Exploration once we END THE WAR

[Warren Stupidity]

13. Actually there isn't.

The damage done by both the corrupt tax policies and the insane war budget have created a huge and most untimely hole into which the federal government is being hurled by the retiring boomers.

[AndyTiedye]

27. Well We Would Have to Ditch Bush**'s Tax Cuts Too. Forgot to Mention That

[IndianaGreen]

2. They will be greeted by Chinese cosmonauts

China has plans for lunar colonization.

[onehandle]

12. Our Chinese masters beat us back to the moon?

Sounds about right.

[soothsayer]

15. Yep, they know that space is the new theater for warfare

[ashling]

3. DANGER, Will Robinson! DANGER! n/t

[ashling]

4. Its Manifest Destiny, I tells ya!

Noting that a tick is a disease carrying parasite that sucks the life out of warm blooded creatures, NASA plans on calling this outpost the Lunatick Asylum. :silly:

[Joe Bacon]

5. When are they sending Martin Landau and Barbara Bain up there?

Along with the nuclear waste we're gonna send up which blows the Moon out of orbit?

[jaybeat]

25. I think we're exactly 7 years too late for that... (nt)

[Kelvin Mace]

6. I plan on building a starship

and traveling to Alpha Centauri around that time.

Now where did I put that formula for transparent aluminum?

[Monkeyman]

8. Nex Nex Nex welcome to Mars The Tour begins here with

Bush's Mars White House

[krispos42]

24. The Red House? lmao n/t

[NYC Liberal]

32. Good gawd, let's hope he's not still in office in 2020!

:crazy:

[Hardrada]

9. We need to begin space travel

since Earth is getting too crowded. And they could make money with tour ships to the Moon. Ships like in the flick 2001. I know I'd like to go.

[tom_paine]

11. The Busheviks are ambitious in their lies if nothing else

Now THAT is a Soviet-style "toilet paper production has increased 600%" LIE.

Don't get me wrong, if America actually did these things, it would be great.

Perhaps future Democratic Presidents (if we are still allowed to have them) will turn around and make good on what is now an obvious lie.

But bankrupt nations don't open up outpost on the moon. maybe China will rent us their outpost for the day to have the photo op.

[Nihil]

14. Nice to see that things haven't changed too much recently.

NASA still haven't managed to find the same planet that the rest of
us happen to occupy ...

> But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps
> space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake
> the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

Uh ... sure guys ... :eyes:

Why not try saving up by shitcanning the dumbasses who propose the
high-visibility BS like "orbital sun-shades"?

[qwlauren35]

16. If privately funded,

I could get excited about this...

But otherwise, I cannot.

I've read science fiction my entire life. I think it would be great if we encountered other sentient species, I think it would be a boon to find other life-sustaining planets. And I certainly wouldn't blame any group of individuals for putting together the money to go off somewhere and try to recreate a paradise.

But not with MY money.

[mainegreen]

17. They should work on replacing the shuttle first. nt

[davekriss]

18. Please Mr. Bush...

...only after we first spend on universal healthcare, affordable housing for all citizens, and free university education. Then you can have your camp in the sky, OK?

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

19. I would have been thrilled once, but you just know that

now it will be an armed military outpost, with missiles pointed straight at Mother Earth.

Count on it.

[VegasWolf]

20. Bush should leave future space plans to a far, far more intelligent president. nt

[Barrett808]

21. Hasn't the south pole water theory recently been challenged?

Thought I read recently that the data were much more ambiguous than in the original analysis.

[NoodleyAppendage]

22. This is GOOD. At least we have the Repukes supporting SCIENCE for once.

Better spent on the Moon and space travel than kickbacks to Repuke-led energy companies or bringing hell-on-earth to people in the Middle East.

j

[Nihil]

31. You think?

Are you sure that the contractors that NASA uses to actually *build*
anything aren't Repukes? Are you sure that the outsourced project
management, etc., aren't going to give a nice wedge to a Repuke
consultancy? Are you sure that the money for this boondoggle is going
to come from the "Middle East Destruction Fund" rather than the US
Health, Education & Welfare budgets?

Gosh. I wish I had your blind faith in the Administration.

[Odin2005]

23. Not untill 2024?

If Congress actually gave NASA more money we could be settling MARS by then.

[Posteritatis]

37. Don't you love the timeframes?

We were given a time limit of less than a decade to get to the Moon the first time, and that involved starting more or less from scratch.

Now it's a vaguely open-ended time limit of a generational scale to go back which is as likely as not to get slashed by one of the next few Congresses, and that's with the past knowledge and experience sitting out there proving that we could do it and how.

We lost something in there somewhere.

(Ed: I cna tpye, ralely!)

[krispos42]

26. They should be building a space elevator first

That would kick the door open for massive, fast and cheap unmanned space probes, interplanetary colonization cargo pods, and a great method for disposing of toxic and nuclear waste.

With a dependence on expensive and unreliable rockets gone, we could do a lot of stuff. We could launch our own seawater across the heavens, sending iceballs smashing into the Moon for use by our outposts as a source of oxygen and rocket fuel. We could take the carbon dioxide from our clean-coal gasification plants and launch that to Mars in an attempt to create a greenhouse effect to make the surface warm and living. Seawater launched to Mars could contain enough single-celled life and organic materials to make living seas. And if the orbit was calculated carefully enough, it could be arrainged so that the fast-moving iceballs streak through the atmosphere on a braking trajectory a couple of times before finally terminating in impact, dumping much-needed heat into the chill planetary atmosphere. A direct perpedicular hit might be able to tap into the old lava beds, releasing even more heat, or perhaps underground fields of trapped atmospheric gases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

I don't think colonization is a way to reduce population pressure. We'd need to move 204,000 people a day just to stay even. That's a 142 per minute. However, it will provide for a new fontier, a place where people that are dissatisified with the current cultural climate can go. It would be, literally, the "New World".

[pkz]

29. they ARE building an elevator

plans to build the elevator to the moon and right in my back yard too.

http://www.isr.us/SEHome.asp

[Barrett808]

38. Also LiftPort

http://www.liftport.com

[Supply Side Jesus]

30. YUP, thats the only way for realistic space exploration.

I take it you've also read the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson? Terrific books!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy

[krispos42]

35. I read the first one

Never got around to the others, but I probably should!

But I also read about it in the book "Article 23", which was a sort of okay book, but the description of recreational jumpers launching themselves from a platform and free-falling down to Earth was pretty cool. Space suit, heat shield, and parachute.

I was attracted to the idea when I came across an article in which they were talking about how they had developed a working model of a climber and demonstrated it by having it clime a piece of rope, so then I read more about it. I actually sat down one day with a physics book and a calculator and did some basic math, just for my own gratification.

[One_Life_To_Give]

33. 21 Years Late

Moonbase Alpha was supposed to be complete and blown out of orbit into deep space in 1999.

But we are long overdue to have a permanent manned presence off of this rock.

[MilesColtrane]

34. I'd rather have my Social Security checks when I retire.

Sadly, Bush's mismanagement and dreams of world conquest make SS solvency and a moon base equally fanciful.

[mainer]

36. It will keep the military-industrial complex employed

They are just too powerful a force to ever be put out of business. If there's no war, they'll make a war. So I'd much rather have them working on a moonbase instead.