Back to the Moon, and Beyond(on the cheap - NASA increase =$800m)

[papau]

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/WorldNewsTonight/space_exploration_040109.html

Back to the Moon, and Beyond
White House Makes New Plan for Space Exploration

By Ned Potter



Jan. 9— The president is set to announce next week that he wants to send astronauts back to the moon around the year 2013, and to make a flyby of Mars by around 2020, sources say.

To help pay for the program, the sources say the Space Shuttles would be retired as soon as they have finished building the International Space Station. The White House would also ask Congress to increase NASA's budget by $800 million next year, and keep increasing it by five percent for several years after that. Currently, NASA's budget is about $15 billion a year.<snip>

Bush's father, on the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing, made a similar call for lunar colonies and a Mars expedition. But the plan, which would have cost hundreds of billions of dollars, went nowhere.

It was not immediately clear what the new venture might cost or how NASA would pay for it.

[La_Serpiente]

1. fiscal conservatives must be going crazy right now

:crazy:

[uhhuh]

2. President Buzz Lightyear?

n/t

[JasonDeter]

3. We should just send bouncy balls all over the solar system and take pics!

[Capt_Nemo]

4. These guys are going nowhere

If they were serious about getting to the moon in 10 years they
would have increase to the NASA budget with a sum 5 times the one
they are proposing.

They want a heavy rocket to bring SDI back from the dead and a
capsule to substitute the shuttle in crew transport. When they get them it's ended. The Moon/Mars stuff is for suckering votes out of
fools...

[arwalden]

5. This Is A Joke... He Wants A "George W. Bush Space Center" In Florida

We cannot afford this. He's just setting himself up for some great honor in 50 years when we eventually DO reach Mars... Bush* wants to be seen as the "visionary" who---like JFK---challenged us to meet those goals.

History will forget that this has ALREADY been a goal for quite some time now and that it wasn't Bush* who suddenly thought of it.

It's all for show... but it's irresponsible and unrealistic.

Personally, I'm fascinated with space exploration and with learning more about our solar system and our universe and beyond. This can be done with probes and robotics.

Granted... it's not as sexy as actually putting a "man on mars"... it's not the stuff of Stanley Kubrick movies... but the extra effort required for---and inherent limitations of---manned missions will definitely cost MORE and will be LESS PRODUCTIVE than robotic missions.

Here's what everyone wants when it comes to space exploration. Everyone wants a mission that's one of these four: Better. Faster. Sexier*. Cheaper. --- Pick three. You can't have all four! One of them is always mutually exclusive of the others.

-- Allen

* a catch-all term that describes the romantic/adventurous notion of blasting humans into space throughout our solar system.

[jmcgowanjm]

6. we'll never get to Mars, we can't get to our own ISS!

And BTW, isn't possession 90% of ownership?

Don't the Russians own the ISS now.
The part that works, I mean.

And we've got to deal w/ the Chinese now as well.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=3128&page=1

if we do get to Mars it'll be in the 22nd C after we've gotten
thru the Great Dieoff.
And discovered a Hydrocarbon substitute.

Or somehow NASA has discovered Huge
Hydrocarbon Pools just below the surface
of Mars.

Isn't denial, inattentiveness, ignorance a form of
brain disease? Another post on DU.

[watercolors]

7. I doubt it will happen

We are not flying the shuttle till 2005, our space station is in need of repairs, so much money has already been put into it. Why waste that resource? Congress will not approve, they have turned their back on funding the program constantly. I get very angry when I think of how we started and how the ball was dropped! Hubby retired from the Ksc 5 yrs ago after 30 years. he has been happy to be part of history, but so much more could and should have been accomplished. not to mention money was wasred on redesigning the space station so many times!

[neverforget]

8. It's all hat and no cattle. Just another election year ploy to make

people feel good and forget their problems.

[BigBigBear]

9. I support

a vigorous space exploration program. I support a return to the moon and a manned trip to Mars.

I believe it should kept away from the military.

I believe it should directed at pure science.

I be3lieve contracts for the technological should be open to foreign companies - whoever can do it best, safest and cleapest.

I believe it should be done with active participation of our allies, for both technological and economic assistance.

I believe no one country has the right to plant its nation's flag on another planet.

I believe it should be adequently funded, but funded only if other more pressing domestic needs are funded ahead of it: education, security, health care, vital infrastructure.

If that's what the Vile Little Man is proposing, I'm okay with it. I rather doubt it is.

[renegade000]

10. took the words right out of my mouth

[Dudley_DUright]

12. Point number one and three are incompatible

Manned missions to Mars have nothing to do with pure science. Pure science is what we are doing right now with robotic missions to Mars. This proposal would actually harm pure science in a very big way by starving it of resources, which is why most scientists I know (and I know quite a few) are against this idea.

On edit: James Van Allen (of Van Allen belt fame) was interviewed by Newsmax (yes I know, hold your nose, but Van Allen's ideas are worth slumming over there) and makes some of the same points that I am making:

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/1/14/135656.shtml

[BigBigBear]

14. Read the Van Allen piece

(and yes, I think need a shower now...)

The argument "We don't know how to do this..." was made in 1961 also, but we did it anyway. Relatively speaking, it was a far riskier committment for its time. I do think the resultant technology advances we gain, by and large, are a good thing - it forces the government to fund technology research into areas that can have an unexpected impact on society as a whole. The libertarians have seizures at this notion, but I'm still old-school on it - I think it's a good thing. I recall Kennedy's statement: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade...not because (it's) easy, but because it's hard."

The argument that more and better science can be done cheaper by robots is absolutely, inarguably correct....to a point. The robotic missions should continue, and that technology stream should continue. We can see the fruits of these efforts right now. (Can't wait for the Rover pictures once it starts moving.) We can resist the notion of mid-range space travel (interplanetary) only so long, however. If it need be postponed for our great great grandchildren to plan and execute, I suppose a case could be made for that. I think alot of scientists believe most of the problems with a Mars mission are solved or solvable. Yes, at great expense, unfortunately. This does give me pause, especially with the obscene debt this administration has amassed.

Certainly, we as a species will travel into interplanetary space eventually. Perhaps I'm selfish, and simply wish to see it happen in my lifetime. I'm 45. It would have to start, in earnest, soon, for that to happen.

Space scientists, and I've known a few, tend also to be desperately territorial about their grant money - a guy who spends 5 years designing a 6" square bio-chemical experiment at $80,000 year for a robotic mission is likely to feel threatened if the funding priorities are suddenly shifted to a manned mission. Sorry, but I also sense that component in the skepticism about manned missions.

[Dudley_DUright]

13. Another good counter argument from one of my favorite physicists

Bob Park at the University of Maryland. His column "What's New" at the American Physical Society web page (www.aps.org) is a "must read" (at least for me).



<snip>
Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland and director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, does not think Bush's plan makes scientific sense.

<snip>

"If I were in charge -- and there are many people who are glad that I'm not -- the first thing I'd do is lay down an absolute rule that no human being set foot on Mars," Park said.

His hard rule would be motivated by science. If the goal of Mars research is to look for life, Park thinks it is wrongheaded to send living beings there to do the looking. "The human being is essentially a bagful of organisms," he points out. The risk of contamination is high, and might ruin any chance of knowing whether bugs found were Martian or terrestrial. For Park, this is elementary science.

"We don't stick our finger into a liquid to see what the temperature is, we put a thermometer," he said.

Park estimates robotic exploration costs about 1 percent of the price of sending humans.

more...

http://www.space.com/news/bush_science_040114.html

[IkeWarnedUs]

11. This is PNAC's plan - to militarize space

Just like everything else Bush has done the past 3 years, this is part of the PNAC plan.

I just posted the sections of the PNAC September 2000 report that talk about the need to control space and establish a new military service - U.S. Space Forces.

Link to the thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1017371

The space station is like the UN - PNAC doesn't want to work with anyone else, they want to control everything themselves!