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excellent, john. im`m wondering would it be better for legs to be encased or exposed?
i`d say a direct drive system like the old kid`s big wheel.
have we met before?
what is the timeframe for this? i`d think a human mission during this phase would be in danger if something went wrong. my vote goes for the telerobotic plan. consider it as: John Henry utilizes Steamhammer, rather than versus. i`d rather take pride in building it myself than a machine doing it. it just seems too mutually exclusive to me.
i think even a small lunar base would be quite sufficient. if nothing else, it would give others a place to come to & toys to play with if it failed. & i`m thinking put it near the old equipment, so that could be inspected for possible salvage or a museum. & no doubt this venture would cast people`s eyes towards L1. this is a bit off-subject, but i recently learned there is actually @ an Lpoint, the SOHO observatory i`m wondering if this could be pointed to the lunar vicinity (or mars for that matter. the reason i`m mentioning this is because apparently The Moon has no lunasynchronous Orbit. in other words an artifact in about The Moon decays fairly rapidly.
I never thot i`d hear myself say this, but we shouldn`t wait for exotic tech. it will come if discovered & developed. meanwhile we have plenty of resources to live in OuterSpace.
there is indeed constant threat of meteorite bombardment & radiation on the Lunar surface. so anything there must withstand that.
The US tries to take care of practically the whole world. Can the US continue to do this or will it break us?
a lesson to be learned is: don`t mix politix in w/ survival necessities.
I agree. None of this can be achieved by Mars first. infrastructure can mean many things including people. during the construction of this, people will be needing to return to a gravity environment occasionally. & it wouldn`t make sense to constantly return them to Earth to rest from MicroG. & i don`t think this will be entirely govt funded. As i`ve said once there is actually a viable plan in place, funds will come. not only funds but some of the investors themselves will wanna come along. & quite frankly once they start doing that, no doubt they would wanna bring assets with them. & i don`t mean hard cash as i wouldn`t mean as much there. i`m glad someone explained the economics of this so i don`t have to, hehe. & i`m glad the homeless were mentioned too. @ this point in the development of Outerspace, anyone can become "rich" if they`re intending on becoming a permanent resident. & being "rich" would mean "owning" a salvaged Lunar Rover (Russian or American). or a GEO artifact. see the thread:clunking our way to Mars. or holding a patent on the 1/6-1/3g retrofit kit.
I think plenty of investors would stepup to the plate. That is if there were a viable plan for permanent residents of Space. Things would have to be done alot differently than they are now, though. nodoubt everything would be televised. ISS & Shuttle probably wouldn`t be used. I doubt there wouldn`t be much of anything done in LEO. I think more Earth launches would be from Equator, straight to higher orbits. A station @ higher orbit doesn`t need as much station-keeping, & The Moon is apparently "easier" to reach too.
Is this area not also known as Geosynchronous Orbit,or GEO?
Yes CM, it`s a waste. Then the next question is where to send them? A LaGrange Point, higher orbit, Lunar Surface? & this should be written as Intl Space Law, much like Intl Maritime Laws are. One never knows when such equipment could save a life or mission. The seas were much more chaotic before Intl Laws much as OuterSpace is now. I`m not exactlysure when & how this cameabout. I haven`t really read about it yet, but will eventually. quick googlesearch would help, nodoubt.
One of the reasons i think SkyLab was lost is bcuz too much was going into the Shuttle @ the time. That is a dangerous trend we`ve fallen into. Mir was similarly lost. no one stepped forward to save Mir. I fear the same for ISS. It`s just too easy for artifacts to burn in atmosphere. i only recently learned about method of Progress` disposal. what a waste. & the Hubble debacle too, imho is similar. I wonder if a catalogue could be kept of past lost opportunitites for salvage. Certainly, Lunar methods were wasteful as well.
have you visited us already?
is there any way to make this link easier? i`m @ library, where firewalls prevent me from the fancy stuff.
Everything in space is horribly expensive its the cost of getting someone out to repair a problem. If your toilet breaks down on the ISS it will cost about 500 million $ just to call out a plumber. So when we go to the Moon which is further it becomes necassary to either have a means to repair the working machinery or attempt to have it so well made it never breaks down. The never breaks down method results in large costs in initial design but also in the mindset of one vehicle is enough to do the job. The unexpected does happen and we must be prepared to sort these problems. So having the ability to repair and customise your robots is a sensible and very desirable option to have.
If we go to the Moon and Mars with the intention of repairing the vehicles and to modify them when we need a new design then we get the ability to do more and do it for longer. One ability that shoud be put in is to make them modular in that components of one robot can be fit in another and to make them as simple as possible. Another desirable trait is to allow us to have the ability to make components at this robot repair shop.
The best thing about making repairable vehicles is that we can try the techniques out on Earth before launching. And if we send them up and then discover something that goes wrong an example being highly charged dust interfering in an important component we can sort this problem. If we send the highly overengineered rover and this problem occurs then we will not have the ability to solve the problem.
And for going slow, there is the parable of the tortoise and the hare.
yes this is exactly what i`m talking about. tho the only way to implement this is by mandate; corporate or governmental, otherwise it`s just flags & footprints allover again. & yes we do need a different design for rovers. but we could use the old ones for a trailer behind a new rover, for instance. & yes that would help us that much more. none of the old equipment would probably useful for critical systems & i`m always stuck in arguments about that. we`ll be needin lots of earth-moving tools & these don`t always hafta be perfectly machined. i`m thinkin way ahead to after MoonReturn where modern equipment would reasonably close to the old, as i doubt MoonReturn would mess with any of it, tho i can only hope. it may even be possible to build a simple hopper from some of the junk. a hopper couldn`t be all that complicated. there`s even supposed to be a small reactor which powered some of it, maybe some fissionable material could be salvaged from it.
this is where the above proposal for an intl space body would come in handy. it appears there have actually been some intl maritime laws which have grown from what was once exclusively Admiralty Law, which i`m assuming here Royal Navy. there does exist a branch of the UN dealing with OuterSpace & since it doesn`t seem to have any real power that avenue would appear to be a deadend. they`ve certainly never answered my emails @least. i`ve proposed on other forums a Universal Statement of Intent of such a body. i believe all OuterSpace equipment should be compatible w/ others. it`s simply dangerous & idiotic that under present conditions death would result because one nation or corporations airhose would be able to connect to an emergency airsupply. i remember once reading Ak47 ammo is compatible w/ M16, & so it seems in wafare @least compatibility is quite necessary, why not OuterSpace? it would be to the advantage of both differing parties.
i think one of the highest priorities on MoonReturn should be inspection of the old equipment. i would land an expedition right on top of one of the sites mind you, what i would do is land between two or more of the old sites. there seems to be two major objections to this in my experience. first, the equipment would be damaged beyond repair, so there is no chance whatsoever of salvaging it. i think that`s a bit shortsighted. i think someone will eventually be able to use it, no matter what shape it`s in. if nothing else, crude tools could be fashioned from it. secondly there appears to be a bias towards the American equipment, the Russian is almost never mentioned.-------------------------------------------what we should also consider in MoonReturn is the fact that afterwards there may be interested parties wanting to salvage from MoonReturn. so from now on i think any OuterSpace ventures should bear in mind future salvage of their current ones. this should be written out as a code of sorts, kinda like the Intl Distress Law. this especially would hold true on planetaqry bodies where there is plenty of places to bury equipment. if the mission is just gonna leave it there, why not allow use of it for future ones? i see no reason, except greed, or pride.
Some others would surely prefer another name.
ISA is errr... Nevermind. Last time people discussed (with) them here, it turned out ugly fast. No need to do a search, The Society has asked to remove related posts on the forum.
yes i agree, Mr. Dobson has ruined a perfectly good name. i thought about that name before i even heard of him.
I wasn't talking about NASA but Private Enterprise get involved and expand into space, Build a consortium across the world with like minded organizations who are already developing in space, and combine resources and if that does work in a consortium approach then through the free market Takeover Approach and merge the companies together into the first mega-space related corporation. That services government and private enterprise and has a large research budget to match with their large skill base .
some of us would like to call this: International Space agency.
ya, i think the Russians would get tired of being "truckers".
i agree about the property issue. the only way to give incentive for going into OuterSpace is profit & the only way to make profit is ownership. for instance what possible way could Bill Gates live there? he`d get bored just riding on Soyuz & maybe living on ISS for a week. he would possibly be interested in a lunar Flyby, which really could only be done on a regular basis from a different Station than ISS. so currently there`s nothing to offer, whatsoever.
spacesuits are tested underwater w/ no ill effects.
i don`t think we`re needing @ this point to worry about very many people on The Moon. obviously there won`t be a large MoonBase anytime soon. even if MoonReturn is only for short visit, it will get people to think about Lunar resources such as they are. let`s say a MoonReturn crew is there for a week, ok now how much longer could they remain in OuterSpace. wouldn`t it be entirely possible that since they were exposed to 1/6g for long enough to "rest" from MicroG, they could carry on further exploration? perhaps instead of returning to Earth, MoonReturn crew could theoretically be "resupplied" as it were. so why don`t we just live w/ the fact MoonBase will never be "big". small can also mean flexible.