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I got the impression from reading the attachments that it's a research vehicle preliminary to an eventual fly-back booster--not a space vehicle.
Why not think: the Moon is to the International Space Station as the ISS is to the Earth. Think of LEO as analogous to a conditioning base camp on the way up Everest. Makes sense to me.
What ever induced you to search out this mission concept? Did you, literally, or was it by chance? Well, after reading it, I think the study was worth whatever it cost the taxpayers: it shows how careful analyses of off-the-top-of-the-head ideas can be taken to their conclusions on paper and archived to be read and understand, and if not found wanting set aside without prejudice by new-to-the field enthusiasts in favour of more promising concepts. What a relief!
Have you ever visited Canada, friend?
Is there ANYTHING federally supported that has produced positive results, since the Bush Administration came into power? I can't think of ONE. And now, we learn of the scandalous conditions at Walter Reed hospital (and others?) that wounded and tramatized veterans of the "war on terror" and their families are encountering. Incompetence personified at the top: two more years to endure, without hope of any lessons learned....
Those vertical surfaces look tacked-on, for looks, when they should be at the edge and canted in order to have any effect. Beautiful artwork thought.
Tom, you made my day! I've been in favour of the fly-back booster approach ever since reading Arthur C. Clarke's "Prelude to Space" way back in the 1950's. And do still, I do, I do ... but it was a nuclear-powered spaceplane, back when we knew nothing of atmospheric pollution, pre "On the Beach" in fact, or the H-bomb atmospheric tests. It won't happen now, until something more benign is thought up to power the fly-back booster. Here's your chance, youngster, to cast off your interminal and (face it) boring political inhibitions, and come up with some joint-party supported programs--if only to challenge the Chinese in the already begun race to establish a foothold on the Moon.
It's a joint Canadain-German, made in Italy film about the choosing of Pope Pius II, around 1450, under very politicized conditions in the Vatican. Look up the review on the Internet. End of rant.
And, behind the scenes in China there's plenty going on. How do I know? In five years (the traditional communist 5-year planning interval) the country has become unrecognizably transformed, subsuming everything of use to them from the rest of the world autocratically, the way we never can democratically. It's a race to the Moon, once again, under new management.
Re. "Use of religious quotations in these situations was not only common, it was traditional."
Nothing traditional about it! It was a first, in every sense of the word. Armstrong got it right when he said what he said after stepping off the ladder. Aldrin owned up that he peed his spacesuit pants--er diaper-- when he stood on the Moon for the first time. How very human! As far as I can remember, none of the other Apollo astronauts performed a religious bit for the folks back home: they pranced about and joked as they joy-rode about the Lunar landscape, without once quoting from the Bible. The mere thought of a chaplain, or a rabbi, or a mullah, arriving on the Moon and stopping to say grace, or whatever, to thank their respective diety for having delivered them in one piece ... now THAT would be scary.
Now you've done it, CIclops: he's off again, and anything that you write to counter his rantings about all things political "sole for the purpose of embarrassing the President" for God's sake, will get neither you nor this thread back on track. I hope he takes the hint, because outside of politics he seems quite rational, and even imaginative....
What a great total Lunar eclipse, we had here in Nova Scotia! Seen from Main Street in front of the theatre, it began to creep up from the lower limb at 5:30 AST just as the full Moon cleared the eastern horizon, went on to full (nothing but a faint dull brownish disk), so I went to the show (a world premier of "The Conclave") and was was just leaving the upper limb as I came out about 8:30. Sorry, Cindy, that it was over by Moonrise out west, but see that film when it comes to a theatre near you, or on DVD, by all means!
I was in Sweden at the time, and felt only embarrassment.
RCNR wrote: "The thing that doesn't make sense is putting full-vehicle 360deg protection for the whole stack the better part of a mile away from the launch pad."
Natch: It was meant in jest. Of course the proper solution would be to assemble the stack and then move the building away after it stopped hailing. :idea:
After all the trouble they've had to protect the Space Shuttle from re-entry at 17,000 mph, you wouldn't think such a routine event as a hail-storm would do enough damage as to cause a return to the shed! Will the latest mod to the programme turn out now to be a tent-shelter over the whole sheebang?
What would be the incentive for religious fundamentalists (say) to go into space, in the first place? I for one, found embarrassing the biblical passages read by the Apollo 8 crew members when they reappeared from behind the Moon. The sight of the distant Earth, climbing above the Lunar horizon, should've elicited something more indicative of the obvious isolation in space of the home planet, and the importance throwing off any reliance upon imagined deities to maintain it habitable. Gee, I wonder what the secular alternative remarks might've been, if those three astronauts hadn't been Bible thumpers?
Tom opines: "I think that by the time 2010 arrives and if the ISS is not completed, we could just halt construction on it and use it as is."
Question: What would you use it for? How would you go about it, transport-wise?
It'd be interesting to read Tom's reaction to each of the above complaints against Bush.
Cindy: Oddly, except for your's, I found no new posts submitted on the 15t--the day after Valentine's-- so just between us (blush) I would like to quote, for all those slackers to read, the following--which could apply to you, if only you follow your dream:
[From a talk, given at Waterloo University's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, in Ontario, by young Dr. Arkani-Hamed, 34, who believes that the scientific community is on the brink of "a real revolution in the understanding of physics."]
"What really drives scientists is a deep sort of curiosity. It doesn't feel like chess. It doesn't feel like playing a game. It doesn't feel like solving a puzzle. Puzzles were invented by humans. In Physics, there's a sense of discovery, and what it contains is far beyond what we imagined we could have imagined.
"For example, Physicists have long been perplexed by the apparent weakness of gravity compared to the three other basic forces in nature: electromagnetism, the weak force associated with atomic radiation, and the strong force that holds atomic nuclei together. One answer may lie in the concept of multiple universes in dimensions beyond the space and time we experience. To visualize this idea, picture in your mind our universe collapsed onto a flat, two-dimensional plane. The stacked planes represent alternative universes--they exist alonside ours, but unless we could extend our perceptions beyond our limited plane, we would be totally unaware of them. A force such as electromagnetism might act only within our universe, while gravity might act throughout multiple universes, effectively diluting its perceived effect in our own universe."
See? no math involved you'll notice, Cindy. Only astronomical observations, followed by wherever the incomparable human imagination that you were born with takes you!
I like the vibes I'm getting from this Bigelow bunch, as their project continues to show that inflatable prototype space habitats are indeed practicable.
Given a choice, would you not prefer to be an astronomer, even a cosmologist, Cindy?
Boy, GCNR, sometimes you come across as a spoiled-rotten little kid!
The Rules of War, for War Lovers:
Be sure your war is the only alternative.
Set a time limit on the war. What works today may be standing in the way of winning the war tomorrow.
Limit the scope of the war as much as possible.
Report the war in plain language, minimizing propaganda.
Be specific about what is allowed and not allowed.
Give refugee nonparticipants a place to go with questions about the war.
Be realistic. Impose a war that will make sense, and explain the logic behind the war.
Focus the war on outcomes, not process.
And finally, fight a green war, remembering that others have to live with the consequences of your war, like land mines, pollution, and budgetary overuns requiring innocent progeny to pay after you have had your war.
I'm replying here just to ensure that the two threads discussed in the above posts from a few years back are kept current, ie: those of optimum space greenhouse pressure (re. RobS) and bone regeneration (re. orionblade) won't be neglected, since they are of such importance to the long voyages--distancewise as well as timewise--now being discussed elsewhere....
Yep, GCNR, you got it right. Incidently, the thought of a safe hydrogen filled airship keeps coming to mind, however powered.