Former Astronaut Glenn Criticizes Bush Space Plan

[Seraphim]

By Broward Liston

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (*******) - U.S. space pioneer John Glenn said on Thursday that President Bush (news - web sites)'s space exploration plan "pulls the rug out from under our scientists" and might waste too much money to ever put astronauts on Mars.



Glenn, a retired Democratic senator from Ohio and the first U.S. astronaut to orbit the Earth, said NASA (news - web sites) should not abandon research on the International Space Station (news - web sites) and questioned the advisability of using the moon as a stepping stone to Mars.


His stinging rebuke of the Bush plan came in testimony before the presidential commission charged with developing a strategy for building a permanent base on the moon, then sending astronauts on to Mars. The commission met at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Glenn's home state of Ohio.


The octogenarian space pioneer's most cutting comments were reserved for NASA's plans to gut the International Space Station of a once-ambitious research agenda, limiting science only to studies applicable to the moon and Mars program.


"We have projects that are planned or in the queue now, projects that people -- academics and laboratories and companies -- have spent millions of dollars to get ready," Glenn said. "That pulls the rug out from under our scientists who placed their faith in NASA, and our scientists within NASA who devoted years and years to their work."


Glenn said basic research had always been part of the human space flight program, dating back to his own three-orbit flight in 1962: "We tried to get everything we could on to every flight back in those days."


He said cutting the research component of the space station program would save only about $2.5 million.


"I think we're voluntarily stopping some of the most unique, cutting-edge research in the history of the whole world. Now we're going to let other nations do it and they'll be able to benefit from it. I just don't think that's right. I think that's a mistake. For a few bucks, we could continue this research," he said.


NASA spokesman Glen Mahone said research aboard the space station will continue but will be limited to the effects of space flight on human physiology.


"We're going to do the research that's important for us to fulfill the president's vision," Mahone said.


Glenn said he would support returning to the moon for research purposes, but urged the panel to seriously consider whether building habitable moon bases as a stepping stone to Mars was cost effective.


"In effect you're making a Cape Canaveral out on the moon. It would be a smaller one, I'm sure, but it would be enormously complex," Glenn said. "It just seems to me the direct-to-Mars (route) is the way to go."


He warned NASA might "use up all our money on the moon and never get to Mars." One commission member, Neil de Grasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, called Glenn's testimony "refreshing in its candor."

[Tane Angle]

woot And Bush cut Hubble all future Hubble funding two days after making his space cowboy announcement. Hubble is the greatest commercial for NASA since Apollo 11. It cost 2 billion to put up there, and another 600 million to fix; it costs a fraction to keep running, so why kill the commercials? :roll: Oh yeah, because we're fresh out of money. :roll: Have a good one all, and just some thoughts...

[fred_engles]

From what I've seen/heard, the reaction to Bush's mars plan in the scientific community is quite negative. There are fears of the Mars program starving other NASA projects. More importantly, from a purely scientific perspective, putting people into space is not a very worthwhile indulgence...humans simply aren't necessary in space from a scientific standpoint - and keeping a human alive in space increases the cost of any mission by several orders-of-magnitude.

[Tane Angle]

There isn't much point to sending humans to Mars until we can fit the parts of a methane factory into one or more heavy lift rocket. Once we do that though, I do support going to Mars. There just isn't much to do on the Moon.

[Ratamacue]

I think we should start a program to go to Alpha Centauri. Yeah, that'd be ill.

[Seoulstriker]

we need to go to mars eventually. how else is the doom plot going to be real? :P

[SOG]

woot And Bush cut Hubble all future Hubble funding two days after making his space cowboy announcement. Hubble is the greatest commercial for NASA since Apollo 11. It cost 2 billion to put up there, and another 600 million to fix; it costs a fraction to keep running, so why kill the commercials? :roll: Oh yeah, because we're fresh out of money. :roll: Have a good one all, and just some thoughts...


uhmmm...... yes, no and no.

he did not cut hubble funding per sei. alot of factors besides his plan were in motion.

the current shuttle only has so many missions left in it. bush's space plan is directing those missions towards completing the international space station in which the US will fullfill its partner obligations to 15 countries. also bush's space plan is directing us to get one solid foot on the moon and starting heavier research for going to mars. basically instead of looking at pretty pictures and analyzing what is millions of years away, bush's plan is stating we should start going instead of just looking. nothing wrong with that.

with that time line and the shuttles retirement there is not enough time to plan a mission for hubble. cost of money? were actually spending more in this sense as the work will cost more for the space station and the moon missions instead of keeping a floating commercial alive. i look forward to the day the hubble rests on the moon, not in orbit. its time nasa made the next great leap and inspired the public like the mars landing. i see nothing wrong with axing a floating ad in replace of true progress like the moon and mars. and we will be doing this internationally according to the plan. its like a working version of the UN! what a concept!

[George W. Bush]

NASA wasn't created so some fat cat geezer scientists can lay back and waste tax payer money.

[fred_engles]

uhmmm...... yes, no and no.

he did not cut hubble funding per sei. alot of factors besides his plan were in motion.

the current shuttle only has so many missions left in it. bush's space plan is directing those missions towards completing the international space station in which the US will fullfill its partner obligations to 15 countries. also bush's space plan is directing us to get one solid foot on the moon and starting heavier research for going to mars. basically instead of looking at pretty pictures and analyzing what is millions of years away, bush's plan is stating we should start going instead of just looking. nothing wrong with that.

with that time line and the shuttles retirement there is not enough time to plan a mission for hubble. cost of money? were actually spending more in this sense as the work will cost more for the space station and the moon missions instead of keeping a floating commercial alive. i look forward to the day the hubble rests on the moon, not in orbit. its time nasa made the next great leap and inspired the public like the mars landing. i see nothing wrong with axing a floating ad in replace of true progress like the moon and mars. and we will be doing this internationally according to the plan. its like a working version of the UN! what a concept!Well, just to nitpick, any moonbase we build would be on the near side of moon (to allow communication with earth), and thus would be a bloody terrible place to put a space telescope.

Other than that, you seem to be calling the hubble a "floating advertisement" (or am I misinterpreting your post - I find it somewhat unclear). If so, you are very badly mistaken - the hubble provides the scientific community with much more of value than the shuttle program ever did. To be perfectly honest - most of the so-called "experiments" done on the shuttle were completely worthless, except for the fundamental experiment of putting human gineau pigs into space to see what types of effects it will have on them (not to in any way minimize the bravery of astronauts, or whatever).

Finally, building a moon base would provide practically no benefits whatsoever, and the moon is actually a worse place to assemble a mars ship than simply in low orbit. Furthermore, there's honestly not much for us to do on the moon, and even mining would cost far more than its worth (one possible exception to this is He3, which has properties that make it excellent for fusion power - however, we have no need for large quantities of that now, since we have no viable fusion reactors).

Actually, now that I think of it, putting a couple billion into fusion research (ITER (http://www.iter.org), for example), would be a much better investment (both for science and for humankind) than a mars mission. But I know better than to expect the Bush administration to put the public good before PR value.

Oh, and I just have to address this:

NASA wasn't created so some fat cat geezer scientists can lay back and waste tax payer money.WTF?!?! NASA wasn't created to fund scientists? Pray tell, what was it created for? To fund the creation of snazzy logos (http://nvo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gifs/nasa-logo.gif)? I can assure you that science is, if anything, grossly underfunded by our government (research funding as percentage of GDP has been falling for decades). How exactly is that money being wasted? I can assure you scientists are not "fat cats" (given the amount of education their jobs require, they are actually paid fairly little - an M.D. will almost always earn significantly more than an astrophysicist, for example). Further, how exactly are they "laying back"? If you think it's such a plush and easy gig - I'm sure there's a spots at the JPL (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/) you might like to apply for, since, after all, it is a life of wealth and leisure. Easy money,right?

[Trigger]

I'm not really 'in the know' regarding NASA stuff, but some of you guys sound like you are.

As far as putting Hubble on the far side of the moon, wouldn't it be rather simple to do as long as there were some kind of 'antenna' on the near side for comms?

[fred_engles]

I'm not really 'in the know' regarding NASA stuff, but some of you guys sound like you are.

As far as putting Hubble on the far side of the moon, wouldn't it be rather simple to do as long as there were some kind of 'antenna' on the near side for comms?Umm...nope. The moon is somethink like 10,000km in circumfrence, so, conservatively, any such telescope (or, more likely, array of telescopes, since that's a much better setup) would be at least a couple thousand km away from the base/communication system (which would be on the near side of the moon). Now, this presents a couple problems. First of all, how do you transport a gigantic (and delicate) telescope that distance? More importantly, how would you get the signal from the telescope to the base? You couldn't very well run an incredibly long ethernet cable, could you? And you couldn't use radio, since the curvature of the moon itself would block the signals (radio travels only by line of sight - on earth, certain radio waves can travel between points where the curvature of the earth prevents direct line-of-sight becuase signals literally bounce back and forth off the earth's ionosphere; the moon has no ionosphere).

Finally, if a telescope on the far side of the earth needed to be repaired (as hubble did), we'd have to put people on surface of the far side of the moon to do it - very risky, especially since they might have to work communicats with the earth). Fixing a telescope that's orbiting the earth, on the other hand, is relatively easy to access.

[Trigger]

Good points. Thanks.

[Gordon]

Just a question, as with Trigger I know next to nothing about this kind of thing.

Would it be possible to put satellites around the moon or would the Earth's gravity counteract this and pull those satellites towards it. I'd have thought there may be a point close to the moon when the pull from the moon would be strong enough to keep the satellite orbitting the moon ... you know fred?

Forgive if i just spouted a bunch of ignorant gibberish ... and please don't laugh at simple folk like me.

[fred_engles]

Would it be possible to put satellites around the moon or would the Earth's gravity counteract this and pull those satellites towards it. I'd have thought there may be a point close to the moon when the pull from the moon would be strong enough to keep the satellite orbitting the moon ... you know fred?

Forgive if i just spouted a bunch of ignorant gibberish ... and please don't laugh at simple folk like me.First of all, I'm no expert myself, and besides, I'd never mock someone who honestly wants to learn (what I can't stand is people who take glory in ignorance).

As for your question: yes, you can put satellites in orbit around the moon (although the orbit would have to be a fairly low and slow one, though - which is no problem, because, since the moon has no atmosphere, you could theoretically orbit it just a tiny amount above its surface ).

At any rate, the reason I am absolutely certain that the moon can be orbited is because we've [i]done it - among others, the apollo command module used to orbit the moon while the lander would descend/ascend from the actual lunar surface.

[Ratamacue]

Just a question, as with Trigger I know next to nothing about this kind of thing.

Would it be possible to put satellites around the moon or would the Earth's gravity counteract this and pull those satellites towards it. I'd have thought there may be a point close to the moon when the pull from the moon would be strong enough to keep the satellite orbitting the moon ... you know fred?

Forgive if i just spouted a bunch of ignorant gibberish ... and please don't laugh at simple folk like me.

This is what I figured we could do. I mean, during complete darkness on the far side of the moon, just imagine the kind of images we could capture of the cosmos. Forget Hubble if we can pull off something like that.

[Ballistic]

Ditching Hubble was a terrible idea, but it couldnt last forever. The next space telescope (JWST - James Webb Space Telescope) will be launched in 2011 and will be more capable than Hubble ever was. It will be much further out than Hubble (out to the L2 point - 2nd Lagrange) at a distance of about 1.5 million km's (1 million miles) from Earth. It's light gathering capabilities are much greater than Hubbles and it's infrared sensors will be more sensitive than anything on Earth can see. The only downside is it's mission life is only 5 years, but NASA is hoping for 10 years.

As far as the moon goes, we have to start somewhere, and as I've said before, beginning on the moon, close to Earth, is better than on Mars where if something terrible goes wrong, there will be little chance of help arriving in time. A small step is better than a big jump into the relative unknown. Our space program is in it's infancy, being bold is great, but you need restraint. By going to the moon we are setting up for the bigger leap to Mars, and that leap is more massive than any of us can really comprehend.

First we need to ensure that the Astronauts will be protected from the mass amounts of radiation in space generated from the sun. We need a spacecraft capable of taking enough provisions and equipment to last at the minimum, 6 months to a year. We need the right propulsion systems to get them there and back.


Well, just to nitpick, any moonbase we build would be on the near side of moon (to allow communication with earth), and thus would be a bloody terrible place to put a space telescope............Finally, building a moon base would provide practically no benefits whatsoever, and the moon is actually a worse place to assemble a mars ship than simply in low orbit. Furthermore, there's honestly not much for us to do on the moon, and even mining would cost far more than its worth (one possible exception to this is He3, which has properties that make it excellent for fusion power - however, we have no need for large quantities of that now, since we have no viable fusion reactors).

The moon based telescope, if it goes ahead, will be on the dark side of the moon. This doesnt necessarily mean it will be the only structure up there. In years to come, industry and normal people WILL colonise the moon, the resources are there, and yes He3 is apparently in abundance. Mining would be difficult, but thats why work is being done on developing mining techniques for the moon to gather the resources. Communications would be tricky, but couldnt relay stations be setup in specific locations to allow communications ? Eventually we will colonise the moon, such things will be needed. I'm sure the scientist and technicians at NASA are thinking about such things and are on top of it. And as stated above, communication sattelites would be a great idea.


Actually, now that I think of it, putting a couple billion into fusion research (ITER, for example), would be a much better investment (both for science and for humankind) than a mars mission. But I know better than to expect the Bush administration to put the public good before PR value.

A breakthrough in Fusion based power would be awesome. Thats all I have to say about that :)

Anyways, just my thoughts.

[budanski]

woot And Bush cut Hubble all future Hubble funding two days after making his space cowboy announcement. Hubble is the greatest commercial for NASA since Apollo 11. It cost 2 billion to put up there, and another 600 million to fix; it costs a fraction to keep running, so why kill the commercials? :roll: Oh yeah, because we're fresh out of money. :roll: Have a good one all, and just some thoughts...

Why pump money into something that is past its life expectancy? I acknowledged that the Hubble Telescope was what ushered in Digital camera technology and all (my first digital camera was an Apple Quicktake 100 in '94), but there are newer and better ones that need more attention. (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/ngst_001213.html)

Just be glad it doesn't apply to older model humans. ;)

[fred_engles]

Ratamacue, I'm not at all convinced that you understand this "dark side of the moon" concept.

The moon always points the same face towards earth. Therefore, we see the same half of the moon all the time, from earth. What we call the "dark side" of the moon is actually the "far side" of the moon, or even the "outer" side of the moon. It's not that it's unusually dark (in fact, half the time, that side will face into the sun, eh?), it's just that we never see it from earth. There's really no strong reason that I can think of to suppose that a moon-based telescope should be what NASA puts its efforts towards. After all, it was SOG who suggested the idea of a moon-based telescope in this thread - not NASA (I know the idea's been floated at least once or twice - but I know of no serious efforts towards it).

[GazB]

Actually in about 2010 there was supposed to be a much better telescope put up to replace Hubble. Instead of one big mirror the new telescope would have several big mirrors all working together. It was supposed to be so powerful that it could see earth sized planets orbitting nearby stars...

It would also be quite large.

They were going to put it in a lagrange point. (A lagrange point for those who don't know is a point of zero gravity. In earth orbit satellites are constantly falling to earth... and everything in the is falling at the same rate so it feels like gravit equals zero... but if you apply force to slow down the satellite it would fall back to earth. Also the atmosphere is not fixed and perfect and an escaping cloud of gas can create friction for low earth orbit objects slowing them down slightly... when it has happened often enough they fall back to earth. A Lagrange point is one of the points between bodies that generate gravity powerful enough to effect all objects in the solar system like the sun and near earth, the earth and the moon. At a certain point between the earth and the moon the gravities of the two bodies cancel each other out and a satellite can be parked there with no gravitational stress on it at all... very good for optically near perfect mirrors... unlike the gravity of the moon or the gravity of the earth and the earths atmosphere...

[SOG]

Other than that, you seem to be calling the hubble a "floating advertisement" (or am I misinterpreting your post - I find it somewhat unclear). If so, you are very badly mistaken - the hubble provides the scientific community with much more of value than the shuttle program ever did. To be perfectly honest - most of the so-called "experiments" done on the shuttle were completely worthless, except for the fundamental experiment of putting human gineau pigs into space to see what types of effects it will have on them (not to in any way minimize the bravery of astronauts, or whatever).

i was referring to the hubble in the context of the person i was talking to "Tane" who was touting the hubbles public bringings of space to the masses. hence it is a floating advertisement to the public in which we also may 1st hand benefit from the discoveries of space alongside the scientists. i was not placing the hubble in some gimmick oriented commercial way.


Finally, building a moon base would provide practically no benefits whatsoever, and the moon is actually a worse place to assemble a mars ship than simply in low orbit. Furthermore, there's honestly not much for us to do on the moon, and even mining would cost far more than its worth (one possible exception to this is He3, which has properties that make it excellent for fusion power - however, we have no need for large quantities of that now, since we have no viable fusion reactors).

well i dont know about you but id love to take a vacation on the moon. not a practical benefit but pending what we can build and put on the moon and also mine to a certain extent it may have yet some uses in military aspects and civilian commercial aspects when consumer costs are viable.

:news clip:

Not only NASA has the Moon in sight. Several commercial firms are ready to go the lunar distance too, perhaps giving the Moon the real business — as a tourist Mecca

what did bush say about it?


Establishing an extended human presence on the Moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth's gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the Moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost."

Bush continued by noting that the Moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials, he added, that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air.

"We can use our time on the Moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments.

now dont knock what bush says because he says it. do you think he actually came up with this **** on his own? sorry, presidents of late arent that "great". what did a scientist have to add to that?


The Moon can be utilized to problem solve at least three issues before leaping to Mars with humans, said Wendell Mendell, NASA Manager for the Office of Human Exploration Science at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.

"First of all, it's really important to understand how the crew will perform on a mission to Mars. That trip is three years long," Mendell said. How that crew interacts and works with each other, plans daily operations, handle sickness, and other activities is critical to know ahead of time.

"So the Moon represents a place to really work on the crew," Mendell said.

A second issue is relationship between the crew and ground control.

"On a Mars mission, the crew is certainly going to be more autonomous. Because of the distances involved, you can't really converse. You can send packets of messages, sort of like faxing," Mendell noted. "So there's going to be a whole new mode of mission operations that has to be worked out and understood."

Lastly, there is need to fully shake-out all hardware as to reliability and servicing patterns, Mendell said.

All these and likely other items should be done on the Moon prior to Mars departure. Doing so would assure mission success and make certain the safe return of the crew to ticker tape parades back here on terra firma.

"If my ideas are true, then it implies we're going to have some kind of facility on the Moon. It would be a place where people would stay for long periods of time. Some people might call that a lunar base," Mendell said.

news source for full fun read:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2004-03-04-lunar-outposts_x.htm

personally i wouldnt mind dropping the space **** and some of the mil **** and spending it on better things, but with what there trying to achieve, there gonna do what there gonna do.


Actually, now that I think of it, putting a couple billion into fusion research (ITER (http://www.iter.org), for example), would be a much better investment (both for science and for humankind) than a mars mission. But I know better than to expect the Bush administration to put the public good before PR value.

oh right because clinton and every president before him put so much research into natural gas harvesting, oceanic current harvesting, poured millions into direction changable wind propelled electric generators, cold fusion and solar cells i forgot bush came along and decided to scratch it all "just for fun".

also it would be better PR to develop these resources and use that too woo the public into thinking he actually cares about them, thier welfare and thier future than to just keep trucking along with the way things are going currently.


Oh, and I just have to address this:

NASA wasn't created so some fat cat geezer scientists can lay back and waste tax payer money.WTF?!?! NASA wasn't created to fund scientists? Pray tell, what was it created for? To fund the creation of snazzy logos (http://nvo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gifs/nasa-logo.gif)? I can assure you that science is, if anything, grossly underfunded by our government (research funding as percentage of GDP has been falling for decades). How exactly is that money being wasted? I can assure you scientists are not "fat cats" (given the amount of education their jobs require, they are actually paid fairly little - an M.D. will almost always earn significantly more than an astrophysicist, for example). Further, how exactly are they "laying back"? If you think it's such a plush and easy gig - I'm sure there's a spots at the JPL (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/) you might like to apply for, since, after all, it is a life of wealth and leisure. Easy money,right?

nasa has had quite a few internal struggles and project money has been widespread till its thin spread. hence, a asskicking by the US gov will hopefully push a firm direction. while i agree too that the money is not squandered on fat cat scientists, it has been a little misplaced and mismanaged as of late.


Umm...nope. The moon is somethink like 10,000km in circumfrence, so, conservatively, any such telescope (or, more likely, array of telescopes, since that's a much better setup) would be at least a couple thousand km away from the base/communication system (which would be on the near side of the moon). Now, this presents a couple problems. First of all, how do you transport a gigantic (and delicate) telescope that distance?

low flying shuttle across the moons surface. transfer it in parts or simply launch pieces into space and move them.


More importantly, how would you get the signal from the telescope to the base? You couldn't very well run an incredibly long ethernet cable, could you? And you couldn't use radio, since the curvature of the moon itself would block the signals (radio travels only by line of sight - on earth, certain radio waves can travel between points where the curvature of the earth prevents direct line-of-sight becuase signals literally bounce back and forth off the earth's ionosphere; the moon has no ionosphere).

same way we do on earth. satellites. also repairing a space telescope from a moon base would require much less money pending the exact repairs since you would need a low powered shuttle to escort the team there unlike the huge costs of launching a shuttle from earth and trying it. and a stationary moon telescope could get great energy sources form the sun when it rotates that way? offhand even launching small rockets with repai supplies would be way cheaper than the shuttle.

[Mark Sman]

Note this post is meant in the spirit of learning. If you are a flamer, I employ the same policy as the US military. Don't ask, DON"T TELL. Sorry bout the typos folks. Spill chucker is off line.

Anyone who wants to see my dumb idea for getting to Mars, jump down to MARS IDEA



fred_engles
Well, just to nitpick, any moonbase we build would be on the near side of moon (to allow communication with earth), and thus would be a bloody terrible place to put a space telescope.

Actually near side and far side of moon both go into light and darkness. Depends orbit and rotation of moon (same rate) compared to orbit of Earth in relation to sun. Earth blots out sun sometimes, not even reflected light from Earth. Far side is in full light sometimes while near side is dark.



fred_engles
And you couldn't use radio, since the curvature of the moon itself would block the signals

You have to orbit a small radio relay, or put down a series of radio relays with LOS to each other. Orbit is easier.

Lastly, Hubble has outlived its planned sevice life, which is cool that it did. But we can either finish the ISS or maintain Hubble. Not both using shuttles. The reality is we have lost two shuttles, and the remainng ones will wear out quicker with the accelerated launch schedule and need to have a second shuttle ready during some missions. Either way, the current shuttle fleet is no factor in a Mars mission. They will have long passed out of service before any possible Mars mission.

A mission to Mars isn't even on the boards yet. What Bush announced was an initiative to get people in NASA moving on way future plans. The ONLY reason some people are against this is because Bush proposed it. Its become like a knee jerk reaction for some folks that can't analyze fact from fiction or see through their own prejudices.

Some others are against it because they worry about funding for their projects. That worry is legit in about 5 years. It will take that long before the first steps of a plan to build a Earth to Mars and return flight can even be considered.

I think people miss the point of efforts like this. The greatest benifit will not be the journey itself. It will be what we learn on the way. The science we developed in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Apollo-Soyuz, Skylab, Shuttle and the ISS were the real rewards. NASA is one of the few areas that the government puts a fair amount of research into that is not designed to blow people up.


MARS IDEA - this is long folks, you've been warned.



fred_engles
the moon is actually a worse place to assemble a mars ship than simply in low orbit.

Absolutely. With an exception. For the most part, a traditional spacecraft, this is true. But for a number of reasons I think a Mars mission is a LOOOOOOONNNNGGGG way off and that the situation will change.

Circum Earth to Mars orbital period for the rovers was six months. They used the fastest trajectory possbile. For a number of reasons a manned mission might not be able to do this. But lets just say they can, and lets assume (actually this is impossible) that they can get a similarly favorable ballistic for the drop home. Thats a year of flight time folks. Not including surface mission time. Anyone here wanna whip me up some quick math on how many Doritos and beers you need to pack for a year long trip? Me neither, but its alot. A lot of mass.

Shielding from radiation. A very legit concern. Earth to Moon is less dangerous because of the shorter transit time. Earth to Mars practically guarantees that some nasty Coronal Mass Ejections will take place between hence and thence. You will need shielding or you will die. Also need some shielding for your Doritos and beer. Thats more mass.

OK so you've built this honking huge Space Tub and you wanna punt it off for Mars. Congratulations. You are going to need a Collosal amount of Newtons. Not the fig type, the energy type. Engine actually doesn't have to be huge, acceleration can be constant, but it does mean alot of fuel. Ion Propulsion System? Solar Sails? Maybe. But the slower you go, the more Doritos you need. My idea is to build Space Tub on the surface of the Moon 1/6 gravity. We would have to have a linear accelerator to launch this beast onto a Mars trajectory. that saves you the fuel it takes to accelerate towards Mars and allows a sizeable craft That doesn't have to propel itself, yet. (Yeah I stole this from "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" by Robert Anson Heinlein)

Yippeee, Space Tub is haulin' the mail to Mars and Ensign Expendable is singing the "99th bottle of beer on the wall" when he notices they are about halfway there. Guess what its time to do. Thats right, start slowing down so that you don't smack into Mars at 15,000 miles per hour. Guess how much fuel thats going to take. Let me get the calculator out and do some complicated work. Seems like it will be roughly the same amount of energy it took to accelerate. Minus the lost mass from Dorios that have been "converted" and any atmosphere friction you wanna use (Space Tub woud need heat shields too then, more mass).

Ok Ens. Expendable gets Space Tub in orbit around Mars. Now its time to get your "Away Party" down to the surface and back. This mission package will arrive seperately. It doesn't require as much shielding as humans. Space Tub docks with the Mars Lander and lands the "Away Team" who by now have definitely spaced every red shrt they brought with them.

They land, party down, and get ready to come back. Guess what, a Third mission package! Call it the Mars Excape Vehicle. This mission package also arrives seperately, but is even more complex. It has to arrive and land on Mars by remote control with a vehicle capable of transportsing Ensign Expendable and his mates back to Mars orbit and dock with Space Tub.

OK, they made it back to Space Tub. And I bet they never thought they would be so happy to smell something that humans have lived confined in for six months. Now Space Tub has to use its propulsion to get back to Earth, and it will have to have enough fuel to slow down again so as not to splat into our little mudball. No linear accelerator here, this probably means rockets, maybe in conjunction with Ion Propulsion System.

In short folks, a logistical nightmare. Whew, live through all that and its a story that will get you laid no matter what type of NASA nerd you are. The tech we will learn in the effort will be Manhattan Project in scope.

Do I think we can do it. No doubt at all. We could do it now. If we made it a top priority. I don't think we'll be doing this for twenty years though, assuming we start the planning now. Oh wait. Someone already suggested that.

[GazB]

also repairing a space telescope from a moon base would require much less money pending the exact repairs since you would need a low powered shuttle to escort the team there unlike the huge costs of launching a shuttle from earth and trying it.

Actually unless water is found on the moon, which is considered unlikely, the cost of resupplying a moon base would be incredibly expensive as Saturn 5 sized rockets would be needed.

The problem with the moon as a base is the lack of an atmosphere... which is also an advantage sometimes. If you have a moonbase an intend to repair a space based telescope from there then you will expend fuel flying up to the telescope and the same amount of fuel landing back on the moonbase. On Earth aerodynamic brakeing is used to sloow down spacecraft returning from space... with wings or parachutes or both.

[aktarian]

I think we should start a program to go to Alpha Centauri. Yeah, that'd be ill.

Just make sure some hispanic bitch doesn't start running around with guns and start mutinity. :lol: