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SNIPET: It will be done but not for many many years it was said that the first space elevator will be possible in about 2050 and not really before. This is of course unless someone creates something really really good before then.
If you read my statement I was simply noting that we have people who try to professionaly see what will be possible in the future, They do this to see what a company should invest in to take advantage of this new and improved technologies. It was from them that I got that quote as they believe material science and the other necessary techniques will be improved enough by then to create the really strong material that is needed. You see it is not just Material science that is needed it is also the ability to make that material in long enough lengths and how we can deploy it. But like everything and these professional fortune tellers will tell you it just takes one genius to change everything by there inspirational thought. And the likelihood is that when this is discovered it will be by someone thinking and working on something totally different and just stumbles onto it.
The costs of making a space elevator will be in the tens of Billions but it all depends on the materials that will make the thread of the space elevator. It will be done but not for many many years it was said that the first space elevator will be possible in about 2050 and not really before. This is of course unless someone creates something really really good before then.
I think if anyone had really paid attention we should have known that Iraq would implode when occupied. There are too many factions and different races to have expected them to become good little western based democracy driven in a year of occupation.
Hmmm very very bad site I wonder if they think elvis is living on Mars in a love shack with Marilyn Monroe
Ah but why do we need to take the ISS back down and it certainly is not doing any science at the moment as the crew are spending more and more time just trying to stay alive. The science modules have still to be launched and it is uncertain if there will be an ISS there for them to arrive at.
Most of the experiments will be able to report there findings to the Research facilities down on earth by use of radio and imaging techniques. If there is something to come down to earth it will go in the Shuttle which hopefully will be working as it is necassary to have it to put up the Science modules in the first place.
Grypd,
I agree with you, and I have seen those comments before, about telerobotics. I think so people haven't got the way that could build on the moon under human supervision without have large numbers of humans there until the facilities are built to support them .
By this do you mean that we need to have a human prescence to overseer the use of telerobotic operations. Well apart from the Humans in the Eath based centers it is not really necessary for humans to be on the Moon to watch these robots. Actually the reason we want to use telerobotic infrastructure creation is that it will cost less to operate robots than people and that the really expensive supply runs can be done away with. Our capacity to send material to the Moon using our current rocket technology is limited. If we have to send material to the Moon to resupply the Human prescence on the Moon then we will fail. But if we use the supply runs to the Moon to provide extra material and robots then soon we will have a base able to using lunar materials support Human operations on the Moon and beyond.
There are questions in not using people on the Moon these are, 1) what if a robot breaks down, 2) who controls the base directives, 3) Humans are more flexible and able to investigate the Moon better, 4) what about the time lag
Well the answer is
1) A robot breaking down will happen but do we need people to fix this problem, No. We will create a central repair depot able to fix problems by use of expert telerobotic repairs. If we can use telerobots to operate on humans then we can use telerobotics to fix machines, actually this is a benefit as we may have to modify machines to function better as experience in working on the Moon is gained
2) The base directives will be done from Earth and will be a reasonably flexible plan that creates the Base and what we need from it. It will create a priority for certain things power generation and oxygen/metal supply.
3) Yes Humans are more flexible but only if they are supplied with the resources that they reguire to function. At first on the Moon if we supply those resources then what we can use is scientists doing pure science.
4) there is more or less a 4 second time lag between the Moon and Earth but it is really negligible the robots will not be working at a speed where this time limit will hurt us.
It is unfortunate that sending robots to create our base is not romantic and will not really attract much public attention but it can be done relatively cheaply compared to Manned flight and this could sneak a programme through until it reaches the critical size that allows for Mass human prescence in space and it becomes strange for us to stop a space programme
The space elevator will be one of the wonders of the 21st century when built it will revolutionise the access to space. But it wont be built or even started until we have got the materials to make it and at the moment we have yet to engineer the required substances though we have a fair idea of the direction to go to do it.
Collision with the Space elevator if by accident or by hostile purpose will be a great threat for the surrounding area so the elevator will have defences to protect it. A fairly decent security control at the base will ensure no devices can be put on the elevator cars and the actual cable will have the equivalent of super powered shotguns to destroy anything that gets too close. But should we not build it of course not, the country that operates a space elevator will control space and that is too important for a minor possibility of hostile action to stop it.
It would allow the creation of a decent Hi-speed hi-spec internet type service. It certainly would be good for future space missions if the crew could be linked by the same internet type communication and information media. As for direct communication that would still be limited by relativity so long delays between answers but E mails would be better and postings from the astronauts could reach earth based boards. Imagine the morale boost to the Mars crews when there kids and close family send them mail from there home computers.
What killed the apollo programme was when they got there using a serious load of resources and cash the public where extatic but the second, third missions got less and less interest. Also there was a war on that had to have more capital and resources and of course it could be said the mission was completed and time to sort out the problems the USA had on Earth. The time for the Hero's and the right stuff had ended. It was decided After that there was a need to have a cheaper option for sending men to space. The domain of the scientists but it was to be the be all for everyone and so the shuttle was born. Well the cheap road to space was certainly not the Shuttle which has turned out to be a bit of a white elephant. But it did make good press but still the public where not interested. Only when NASA was to send a teacher to space that the public got interested teachers are commen people you see. But Challenger exploded.
The problem I see with public interest in space is it is thought of as something only scientists can do not us the commen person. Until we have people walking on the streets applying for jobs then space will allways be thought of as the exotic occupation that you have no hope of becoming. If we can get that to change if there is a need in space for engineers and plumbers and commen workmen then there will be interest again.
About a month ago I had posted in another thread that the Russians had proposed an alliance with ESA and that part of it was to develop the Kliper to provide the Manned part of the base aurorae programmes. The money that ESA could provide to the Russian space effort could easily pay for development of the Kliper and it would give the ESA a manned craft that may well be capable o being launched by Arianne or by a generation of Russian boosters from the ESA facility in french guyanna.
Quasar777 you are right objects in lunar orbit decay rapidly but there are two very close lagrange points where objects placed there could remain for a long long time and this is a good place to put a Lunar interface station.
A small base on the Moon as long as it is given the right infrastructure and telerobot support will not remain small long. The beauty of Telerobotic infrastructure and facility creation is that the Robots will be able to work 24 hrs a day as long as there is light initially but when the Lunar power structure reaches a certain point of size of the power grid it becomes 24-7 and 365 days. How can we do this by simply having three small centers that control the robot workers and operators that hand over control of there machine to the next in line as the day goes on. These centers are in different countries and different time zones around the world. Using the material we mine and pick up from the Moon regolith we can keep expanding and increasing capability until the Moon is able to support Mans further expansion outwards cheaply.
If we are sending Cargo to space then why do we need all the extra components that a manned vehicle needs. For a start a manned vehicle needs to be able to return to Earth where as it does not make financial sense for this to happen for a cargo vehicle. A manned vehicle needs to have life support and heat shields, it will also likely reguire to have space for pilots as who trusts a completely automated vessel and the seats, instrument panels that they need. So when it comes down to it using what will likely be possible the best way is to have one shot cargo rockets which would be a form of heavy lift and reusable space planes which carry people and very light loads.
Larry I could be cynical and say what he thought he was getting was a manned missile base on the Moon where any first strike would still have resulted in the death of the enemy. Better as well for a military base is its position to do down the well shots where your base on the moon can shoot down and the enemy struggle to launch up.
But it is the simple fact that he wanted to show that the USSR was not the preeminent superpower and communism was not the wave of the future and that your ideals where better than theres. This is conflict but not shooting at each other but with ideals and one up manship. Think of it as chess but he who can play the game the longest wins.
Well will this be the final deathknell for Hubble and any form of a replacement
http://spacedaily.com/2004/040916062050 … ]Australia plans new telescope
If this can be done then it will kill most of the arquements that the save the Hubble crowd have and it might well stop a replacement.
Ehhh Apollo had a couple of things going for it though...
-A dead president Kennedy, so the Lunar mission was somthing of a tribute to him. The absurd idea of actually going to the Moon became somthing "we HAD to do."
-Communism, threatening to fundimentally destroy the American way of life through domination, political military or economic. Beating the Commies to the Moon was a huge political and psychological victory.
Believe it or not, beating the Russian to the Moon was not Kennedy's only reason for going to the moon and was not even his primary reason for going to the moon. Kennedy was a World War II vet and he was around during the Great Depression was going on before the war. He watched FDR take a depressed nation and rebuild America with government credit financing building infrastructural project like dam's and power plant's and such. So when Kennedy made his speech that we were going to the moon, he knew exactly what that would do to the U.S. Economy. It would touch off an economic expansion that would create new jobs and decrease the unemployed, along with develop new technologies and do it in a relatively short period of time and this was his primary reason for doing the moon mission. It did exactly that too. Not only that, he intended to keep these benefits coming from space by adding other space goal mission. He intended for NASA to put a base on the moon, go to mars, develop fission drive and then go to fusion drive. He said about fusion, it will do for space travel what fission does for ocean travel. He even offered to go with the Russian to the moon together and they refused his offer.
Larry,
That may be true but he was able to get the funding and attention he needed for one good reason. The USA was scared and surprised by the USSR having had launched sputnik. It was in this enviroment of a secret and deadly war for who would rule the world that Kennedy had to reassure the American people that the USA could do it and that is how the apollo program came about. It has been called the ultimate public propaganda statement. It is unfortunate that there is nothing now that is able to push the program again
We are facing as a world a new energy crisis we have a demand for fuel that is garnered from countries that are what we class as best unstable or our supplies elsewhere have reached maximum harvesting. We are now looking at Hydrogen fuel celled cars as a real proposal and there are a lot of houses that are supplied by gas and oil that would move to a cheaper form of energy supply. But fuel cells are expensive as they need platinum to be able to function to the best efficiency that they can get. Platinum demand has remained a stable in mineral exchanges unlike gold but if we start to use large numbers of fuel cells then platinum prices will sky rocket.
At the moment platinum is going for 885$ for an ounce to the price of gold at 409$. it has increased in price over the years and as an example was worth only 440$ an ounce in 1998. Dr Zubrin stated that we would not go the Moon just to harvest helium 3 and as much as I regret it we wont. But if we go to the Moon to mine the Noble metals then we can harvest the Helium 3 too. The research into fusion power has exploded in recent years it was always what we call the poor science as the cost to develop it was not being paid as we had cheap oil. But oil is no longer cheap and so fusion is back on the table with Japan leading the way. When we develop fusion then we can develop the fusion powered rocket and what would the times be for one of these ships to fly too the Mars and to the new persian gulf, the gas giants.
When people think of the lunar resources available H3 always comes up but any conlony or crew of any size needs water, oxygen, food and power. Using lunar materials only makes sense if any of the for mentioned can be forfilled for as close to free as possible.
Yes, that going to be a problem.
I think the verdict is still out as to whether there any water on the poles of the moon as ice. But, even assuming that there not, there still oxygen atoms locked up in the lunar dust, but it will take some effort to break it loose and free it up. Without fission and/or fusion powered rocket at our disposal, we couldn't chase down a comet bust off piece for our moon colony. So it going to be a very long and tedious job generate the air supply and water supply. The power supply should be relatively easy and doable, but would be a major effort.
Larry,
The verdict is still out but maybe the answer if there is water ice on the moon will be answered soon. The Smart probe plans to start at the lunar equator and slowly keep getting up to the higher latitudes and if it can see into one of those permanently dark craters.
If it cant then its high time we send a lunar rover to do the job. That is something easily doable now and frankly will answer a lot of questions that need answering.
What is the correction to this existing problem of outsourcing and lowering of middle to lower class wages?
Already been answered in my last post.
Larry,
Im sorry to say that it has not been answered. The problem is supply and demand more and more of the population do what was called middle class work this is office white collar jobs. But when the demographics change then so does what what we have traditionally called the wages structure.
The only way in the end to improve wages is to either be in a job where supply is smaller than demand or the harder way raise the living standards of everyone.
Just for the sake of the argument lets say that I'm President of the United States and I look at this 500 billion dollars trade deficit and I say this is nut’s we have to do something about this. I would first figure out what need to be done to correct this problem and it will include trade barriers to protect the home market from being destroyed. Yes I will be putting up trade barrier, but for I do that I would be calling those other nation together for an economic summit to discuss this matter. I also know that they are also suffering from this free trade agreement also and there economies are collapsing too. Look at them and I say this free trade agreement is destroying the United State and the rest of the world too. Look at what this free trade did to Africa and starvation that going on there and it unacceptable to let this to continue or continue with these agreement. This economic collapse is not only hitting Africa, but is starting to hit south America, Europe, Asia and is even pulling the U.S. Economy down too and in the not too distant future, the United States could also look like Africa too with starvation in America too on that level. So here what I suggest we do. We still are going to have to trade with each others, that will not change, but certain trade barrier have go so each of our individual countries can protect our individual economies from economic collapse. Now we have to work out a solution that is beneficial to every one here and is a workable solution. Negotiation are now open for discussion. We negotiate we our trading partners and there will be problems, but we come up with something that we can at least work with even with it problems. The African nation come up and say we are completely busted and we can't say ourselves and we have no products to sell and are starving to death. I stand up as President of the United States and I say, we need to make a fund to finance rebuilding Africa with no charge to the African people because they can't pay for it so they can rebuild there countries in Africa. In America I have signed a five hundred billion dollar to one trillion dollars of credit on the Treasury Department to rebuild America and make us prosperous again. Here what I will do, I will sign a second note of credit on the Treasury Department of one trillion dollars with 0% and a thirty year termination date where that automatically goes to $0 dollar value so these African nation will have the money to rebuild there nations. Whether or not any other nation choose to engage in this great enterprise to rebuild Africa, I want you to know that America is committed to rebuilding Africa. This way they can take that trillion dollar credit note and go to American Manufacturers to trains, subway, farming equipment, manufacturing tool to setup factories, buy nuclear power and nuclear powered desalting plants the kind of infrastructure that you need to have to run a modern economy to rebuild there nation and make it prosperous also.
Now we will still be trading with other nations, but it will be the kind of trading that will be beneficial to everyone concerned in the trade. With rebuilding of both America and the rest of the world with massive projects, trading will actually increase and not decrease.
Most people don’t really understand what the true Nature of America and it Constitution is suppose to be and unfortunately many of those people that don't understand are also Americans too.
Larry,
The value of the American dollar is in what it represents and that is the perception of what the United states economy is. If you raise trade bariers you WILL not decrease the trade deficit you will increase it. Why who would buy super expensive American goods when they can get them from the tiger economies of the far east. Actually raiseing that sort of trade barrier will instantly benefit the Japanese economy and drive it out of its economic doldrums.
Other effects are that the price of Oil will now be quoted in Euros and a substantial bit of American power its economic apparent strength will fade. Africa is an example of what happens when free trade is not enforced the whole region is a quagmire of taxed movement of goods and poor infrastructure. Africa also is where when for every 100 million dollars you put as aid too about half is stolen by local politicians and officials. Africa is the possibly the richest region in terms of potential wealth but with the way it is locally governed it has the poorest per capita per person.
Oh one other thing if you insist on printing money coupled with your "economic reforms" then you will be printing trillion dollar notes that is what the price of inflation will make the price of a loaf of bread a trillion dollars to get one. No country is what it is worth now we are not on the gold standard there is more money in circulation than the promise note states. "To pay the bearer"
Or you must penalize those companies who chose to move there supossed head quaters off shore but still have there businesses on american soil.
Have a flexible hourly wage offset tarrif on imported goods for each nation.
But on the flip side there are other factors have caused some of the reasons for why companies are unwilling to pay people fair wages.
This is called trade protection and there are treaties that stop this. If the USA does this then you will have other countries do the same to you. If it makes the products made by American workers too expensive then they cannot sell and jobs have to be lost. Companies will get around this too, if the R+D for new products is done in the USA then the actual product is made in another country.
Also there are things that are imported that are needed to make goods now these materials are cheap and reduce the real cost of American goods. But if taxed then this increases the cost of American goods and makes them frankly uncompetitive. Also as the cost of goods for sale increases then people in the USA will want more wages to pay for these goods this leads to inflation.
Frankly if you go onto a trade tarrif system the results for the United States economy and its trade deficit will be as disasterous as they can get. It would lead to an increase in fiscal debt as the Federal goverment has to spend money in Unemployment benefit and at the same time has a reduced tax base.
And finally if you deliberatly tax another countries goods what will they tax you to pay you back. The person to be most hurt in this is the small buisness who make luxury type items and who has little capacity to relocate to better financial climate. And as a final point if a buisness is struggling it gets taken over and this will be done by a company which can and will likely be foreign. Then the real home of this company is another country and there HQ is abroad. These are what we call Multi nationals.
I am with GCNRevenger on this one. It really depends on what we are going to do in space that will decide what sort of vehicle is needed. Reusable launch vehicles will cost a fortune to develop but there use is cheaper and if we need a lot of launches then they will prove to be of worth to develop. But at the moment without a proper sense of where and how we wish to go to then expendable is what we do.
I am an advocate of reusable shuttles with a form of expendable heavier lift to supplement it. But this is through my view of how I view our exploration of space to go, but I expect that we will start with expendable only launches but with the increased emphasis of space then we complete a program to have totally reusable craft.
It wouldnt be the Sun shining through something like the photographers glasses would it. It would explain the defraction at the edges and how the photographers shadow is dead center in the picture. The glasses of the photographer may well be on his hat as he is using the camera and has put them up to see through the lens better.
About the B29, you see the soviets had there own copies from the aircraft that due to damage or similar had flown to the safety of the Soviet union from the bombing of Japan. There ability to copy and then use there own versions was astonishing it then became who could build the most and the USSR might well have been able to do it.
So if Patton had got his wish to carry on and to try to finish off the USSR it is pretty sure he would have failed. His supply lines where streched just to get to germany and he was facing a numerically superior foe in terms of war materials so the use of the atomic bomb would have been a necessity. If a conventional war had been fought at the time we may have hurt the soviets enough to have them pull back but that would actually make them stronger as there stretched supply lines would have been eased. The death toll amongst the B29 crews as they attacked the USSRs armaments factories behind the Ural mountains would have been catastrophic.
Though Patton may have felt the risk was worth it I honestly think saner heads prevaled there. Of course it lead to the cold war but the options to stop it where too risky and what the Cold war was a war of ideals with each side maneuvering through allies and neutrals to try to win. This war lead to a strain that the USSR could not maintain and when the end did come it was quick and certain. Of course the fallout is still hurting with Ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and the Islamic terrorists that we trained to fight the USSR attacking us now. But that is what happens when a paradigm changes.
History teaches us that there is always a space between these type of conflicts and we are in one now. But there will be future confrontations between differing idealogies/ civilisations as an example Greek vs Persian, Roman vs Carthaginian, Islamic vs Christianity, England vs France, Allies vs Fascism. It now asks the question what will be the next conflict and what will it be, you see there are quite a few possibilities.
What would it cost to create a Man-Capable delta with escape tower. I honestly think it could be done reasonably quick and cheap. It is the solid motors that have failed and the Delta uses a lot of them there are options to create a non solid boosted rocket. It now comes to cost of flights.
We seem to have agreed that we should go for the moon first and to develop it to the stage where it can benefit missions to other destinations. So what do we use and what do we have to develop to get this done.
I honestly believe that NASA has not done the groundwork yet, it is only talking about it. NASA has been dominated by the shuttle and the ISS for years and has ignored the various MARS and MOON undergrounds that tried to get the space programme back on the track they should have been. There have been developments that will help but they are not linked into any form of a detailed plan with a general path laid out that can be followed. My general feeling is NASA is unsure what to do and until the elections are finished in november will not reveal any detailed plans. At the moment NASA is also not wanting to rock the applecart and will not fully embrace any private buisness ventures.