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#101 2004-08-25 08:23:59

quasar777
Member
Registered: 2002-05-05
Posts: 135

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

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.

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#102 2004-08-25 10:34:43

Palomar
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2002-05-30
Posts: 9,734

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/rocketsc … tml]Saturn V no longer good enough, eh?    ???

Heresy!

--Cindy   :;):

P.S.:  Mars first anyway.  tongue


We all know [i]those[/i] Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

--John Sladek (The New Apocrypha)

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#103 2004-08-25 11:29:39

deagleninja
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-04-28
Posts: 376

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

tongue Earth
:angry: Venus
roll Moon
yikes Mars

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#104 2004-08-25 18:35:34

Martian Republic
Member
From: Haltom City- Dallas/Fort Worth
Registered: 2004-06-13
Posts: 855

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

you can also expect several machines or robots to break in one week period at a rate of around few percentages to maybe 5% or so. So you may as well start figuring that into the system right now and not hope for the best that that won’t happen.

Not neccesary that high. It won't happen. Just over-design a factor of XX.

Now, on Earth that number is acceptable, because with human labor, replacing/repairing these things is relatively cheap, compared w/ overall cost.
So they build your CNC machine that way, making it more reliable makes it either more costly to build and/or leads to lower output.

So you build a sturdier CNC... or use the same ones like on Earth but with a lesser output by using a lower powered motor.

We had a CNC at school that never broke down, it was a spanking new but second-hand one, originally for demonstrations, totally identical to the ones used in industry, BUT it had a less powerful motor, incapable of ripping the thing apart. (simplified)
In other words: it was working not on the bleeding edge, but well withing its design parameters. In fact, it was over-designed, with that puny motor (but still *vastly* superior to our old lathes etc, i assure you!)

the MERs are also over-designed, so will robots, CNC's etc be, if you want to use them w/o people.

I agree with you that we should over engineer our NC or our robots that we send to the moon and that will in fact help the problem of the maintaince that we have to deal with.

Your statement that we had CNC Machine at school is a dead give away as to your understanding of the maintaince we are going to have. First of all, that school CNC Machine is not going to get the work out that a production machine in a regular machine shop is go to have. Here are some of the things that will be different between the school CNC Machine and the Machine shop.

1. The school CNC Machine generally only runs for a few hour for five days a week. The machine shop that CNC Machine might be running 24 hours a day for seven days a week. Your going to get maybe ten times as much machining done in a machine shop than you will with a school CNC Machine. Also you going to be running production with CNC Machine in a Machine shop and you not going to be running on the school CNC Machine. One a school CNC, you will generally only be cutting two or three and then making a new setup or maybe some body else in the class will get a chance to cut there two or three parts. In a trade school there going to teach you to make setup and the cut your project part. I went to one of those school and made my own "C" clamps, "T" slot cleaner. But, a production machine in a machine shop could be running one thousand to five thousand part in an eight hour shift and there three shift you can run it on. So you could conceivable get several thousand times more ware and tare on a production CNC machine than on that School Machine Shop in a twenty four hour period. Like going up and down on the slide several thousand time vs twenty or thirty. The computer is always active, counting part and in constant motion.

2. Your always pushing the boundaries of your machine so you can get more production out. So you will have a tendency to ware a production machine out fast in a machine shop vs a school CNC Machine. Yes, we can slow down our production that we are going to get with our CNC Machines on the Moon so we won't tear up fast like in that school CNC Machines that you referred to instead of the Machine shop that I'm referring to. You will lose maybe 50% of your production or more, but it can be done. Either way you go, your making a decision as to what you would rather have and what your prepared to trade for that result that you want. In a machine shop environment, you will have cutter to increase the production capacity that you won't have in the school environment like staggered cutter. Those are cutter that are star stepped design for cutting more metal off at on time. They have staggered cutter that have a four inch deep stagger on it. If you have a machine that is built to take the load, you could cut four inches in one pass. If your cutting four to twelve inches, it might take you fifteen minutes to cut it with that four inch deep cutter. But, if your using a regular cutter that school would be using, you might have to make twenty or thirty passes at hundred thousand to two hundred thousand a pass. Fifteen minutes times how many more passes your going to be making to cut that part. Your making another choice and your deciding what you want to trade off to get the results that you want. Your going to put a whole more ware and tear on those machines, but, you can produce something ten times faster too or have ten time as many machines.

3. The type of material that you cut on those CNC Machines also make a difference too. You generally won't be cutting cast iron on a School CNC machines and cast iron will really mess up even conventional mills and lathes and it really messes up CNC machines. That cast iron produces a dust that get in the slide, oil, coolant, etc. and screw stuff up.

There are other veritable, that I have not mentioned, but I think you get the idea.

But, let take my CNC machines that is using there machine mare 100 more than your school example and there CNC Machine and we won't consider special tool other enhancement. Now our machine shop runs there CNC for twenty four hour for three hundred sixty five days or one year non stop. Now if our machine shop doesn't use there CNC for 3,650 year, because it will take your school that long to catch this amount of use on your school CNC machine. You will replace the rubber hoses few hundred times, etc, etc, etc.

Your comparing apple to oranges and you should not do that.

Larry,

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#105 2004-08-26 04:30:56

Rxke
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2003-11-03
Posts: 3,669

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Hmmm... Agreed, the comparison is not perfect, but...

I could argue the school CNC actually sees *more* wear and tear, relative to 24/24 machines...

Students do *very* stupid stuff with it (even some teachers did some insane things..)

It starts and stops more, leading to more temperature fluctuations/cycling (cooling down, warming up...) and it is not built for that.

In fact it was built to work 24/24, but it didn't, so you'd see more problems, but a serviceguy, who checked the logs (running time etc.) said the machine did amazingly well (because in a way the errr... fuselage/bulk or whatever you call it... Body... was overengineered re the motor.

So it was not comparing maintenance done over a human related timeframe (like every week) but over absolute time working. Let's say every 1000 hours of actual motor running...
Oh, and it was used in weekends, evening classes too, heehee, very popular machine... Compare it with the old mainframe computers, where there were waiting-lists to get your program running on it. That thing was state-of-the art then, the rest of the machinepark was mainly non-ceramics stuff/machinery from WWII... I got relatively lots of experience with the machine, because i was seen as some whizz-kid/codemonkey, so i regularly helped out programming stuff (even teachers, the older guys, from the industry that turned teacher...They had never touched a computer...)

Your always pushing the boundaries of your machine so you can get more production out. So you will have a tendency to ware a production machine out fast in a machine shop vs a school CNC Machine. Yes, we can slow down our production that we are going to get with our CNC Machines on the Moon so we won't tear up fast like in that school CNC Machines that you referred to instead of the Machine shop that I'm referring to. You will lose maybe 50% of your production or more, but it can be done. Either way you go, your making a decision as to what you would rather have and what your prepared to trade for that result that you want....

....Your making another choice and your deciding what you want to trade off to get the results that you want.... Your going to put a whole more ware and tear on those machines, but, you can produce something ten times faster too or have ten time as many machines.

But on the Moon/Mars you don't want to push the boundaries, Spirit/Opp are 10x overdesigned, they don't push the rovers, would be crazy. (Prediction: Now you'll probably see operators starting pushing boundaries , they're over twice their designed lifetime, so breaking them trying some pushing won't be too bad...)
And those 10 times more machines won't break down 10 times more, so go for the ten slow machines. We have a saying in Dutch, "slowly won't break the line"
Ok not ten machines on the Moon, but one, ten times slower. Just so you don't have as much breakdowns. Because they'd be *very* hard to repair, w/o humans.

It is more efficient outside Earth to have slower output but with lesser *human* repair, than fast output combined with human repair.
Human labor on Earth is cheap, from LEO out it's horribly expensive.

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#106 2004-08-26 05:06:32

Rxke
Member
From: Belgium
Registered: 2003-11-03
Posts: 3,669

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

BTW Larry,

They have staggered cutter that have a four inch deep stagger on it.

Boy... Isn't progress amazing? Imagine showing that to a guy who lived in the thirties, he'd think it was magic  smile

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#107 2004-08-26 05:37:02

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

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.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#108 2004-08-26 06:23:00

deagleninja
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-04-28
Posts: 376

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

We already know the Moon isn't made of cheese.

There is no good reason to send humans back to the Moon just to rediscover that fact.

Send humans to build a permanent base? Yes.
Send humans to build an automated telescope on the farside. Yes.
Send humans to play golf, plant a flag, and come home. No.

We shouldn't even be considering sending people back to the Moon if we aren't going to do one of those first two things. Any information we need about the Moon can be achieved by sending 2 orbiters and a telerobotic science lab to the surface. Anything else is just more waste and misdirection.

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#109 2004-08-26 06:57:59

comstar03
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-07-19
Posts: 329

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

deagleninja,

When Humanity goes back to the moon , this time should be for permanent, and not by half measures either. I think its time that we build a moon base that is a part of a master planned settlement that would be self- sustaining, in the shortest time possible. At the same time the LEO , L1-5 points are also under development. Yes it might take most of the next 50 years to start and expand this beginning for humanity, but once started and get to this size it won't stop and even us leaving the planet ( through death ) will feel that humanity is a space race and is now exploring and colonizing space now and forever after the beginning that we can see happen.

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#110 2004-08-26 07:35:17

quasar777
Member
Registered: 2002-05-05
Posts: 135

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

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.

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#111 2004-08-26 11:27:45

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,967

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

So even if the Space Exploration Vision is mandated I still see a problem with execution of it. The first being Funding, the second being NASA and the third being lack of designed equipment to do the job of going.

In baseball that is three strikes and you are out.

Private industry might be able to do the last one but it will be the others that will stop any chance of getting it done.

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#112 2004-08-26 14:09:22

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

We already know the Moon isn't made of cheese.

Of course we do we knew it then too

There is no good reason to send humans back to the Moon just to rediscover that fact.

There are many reasons we should go back and why just send people we send machines first people have better duties to do.

Send humans to build a permanent base? Yes.

No we dont send people to do this we send robots. People are expensive. We send machines to prepare the ground work.

Send humans to build an automated telescope on the farside. Yes.

Why send men to do what a machine can do plant a piece of automated machinery. You do know that if we put a telescope at both the north and south poles and at equal spaces between we then get a telescope if they all focus at the same spot with the diameter of the whole Moon. This would allow us to see continents on Earth type planets around nearby stars. That is how good lunar telescopes will be.

Send humans to play golf, plant a flag, and come home. No.

No flags and footprints was done by apollo, we can agree it was only to show the prestige of the USA. As it was one apollo did more science than all the rest, Why, it had a geoligist on it.

We shouldn't even be considering sending people back to the Moon if we aren't going to do one of those first two things. Any information we need about the Moon can be achieved by sending 2 orbiters and a telerobotic science lab to the surface. Anything else is just more waste and misdirection.

This is just plane wrong. You do know that for the last 4000 million years the Sun has been shining on the Moon but unlike the earth these particles have been stored in the Lunar regolith. This means we can see what the sun was doing when the earth had life first forming. Like the Antartic drilling into the Lunar dust could tell us all these things. All the sciences will benefit by having a base on the Moon but then the moon gives us more than this. It will give us a chance to look up and give us hope. We can control our destiny we are not locked to this planet.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#113 2004-08-26 14:25:01

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,967

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Why waist the time with sending any probes at all?

We do not need science to build, only mining or bull dozer equipment. We know where we want to be for the chance of water contained regolith at the poles in deep creaters. Pick one it has two of them to chose from.

What will be of need for telerobotics is networking of satelites to allow for constant communications.

Once the cave or mining hole is dug. Then what next? Man... and more.
Lets go....

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#114 2004-08-26 17:05:00

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

unfortunatly like the Earth the moon is not a constant terrain. We have boulder fields and plains of broken volcanic glass. Only when we choose spots to land and have deeply surveyed them by use of satelites do we send the rovers in to really have a good look and set up the landing zones.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#115 2004-08-26 21:44:47

deagleninja
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-04-28
Posts: 376

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Ok....I'll bite. If the Moon is so great a location for 'humanity's next step to becoming a space-faring race', then why isn't Mars an even better launching point? Please include reasons for why the Moon is better than Mars that a large asteroid could not also provide.

In a perfect world, or at least a country with a reasonable militray budget, there would be plenty of funding for both Moon and Mars missions. However, we don't live in a perfect world, or for that matter a relatively sane country.

Can the Moon answer scientific questions? Yes, but so can my pet cat, and no one is considering spening billions on him. I'm sorry, but the Moon is a dead world in more ways than one. It's only possible valuable resource is helium-3 for fussion reactors we aren't sure will work.

The Moon will always be dependant on the Earth. It simply lacks the resources to ever provide for a thriving colony, let alone all the plants and animals we like to bring with us. Anyone living on the Moon for long periods of time will no doubt go crazy looking out at its bleak landscapes.

Why go to the Moon? What is there? It is as hostile and unforgiving an environment as is possible in our neck of the woods. Choose a world with a future, choose Mars.

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#116 2004-08-27 00:18:21

comstar03
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-07-19
Posts: 329

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

deagleninja,

In order for humanity to expand into space we first need a large spacedock facilities, and the resources to mine from, the moon doesn't have atomspheric drag on the designs of the spacecrafts, it also has a higher solar power collection level than Mars, also the earth can provide a large workforce to lunar settlement, crews for training , space based activities. ( Lunar base have 2/3 resources will 1/3 to Mars )

Once the Moon is built up to a level that would add the expansion of mars, a small marsbase - up to 20+ personnel - would be function there. The resource mix will change to - 1/4 maintenance, 1/2 Colonization, 1/4 Exploration / Discovery -  Remember the resources have increased with mining, food processing, engineering, tourism, and living / business rental space on the Moon and Earth Orbit.

Then the Mars settlement would then move into high gear, because the unmanned settlement cargo transports would be launched from the Moon carrying half-dozen cargo pods each for expansion from small base to small martian settlement. ( three cargo transports, one orbital station transport and one human transport carrying additional fifty + personnel for the permanent settlement.

Earth by itself can not expand Mars effectively, we need the Moon to build the large space vessels to carry the large cargo modules to Mars.

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#117 2004-08-27 01:18:19

Dook
Banned
From: USA
Registered: 2004-01-09
Posts: 1,409

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

I have no doubt that one day humanity will leave our solar system.  It won't be for a thousand years but someday I think it will happen.  There is no point in even attempting it now.  You want to mine the moon and asteroids then build a giant ship and send it out full of humans to where?  Are they supposed to float forever in space? 

We don't need large cargo modules to transplant humans to mars.  Only when mars has an atmosphere will the population increase and at a slow pace from incoming ships as well as childbirth.  Slow and steady so you do not overburden food and water production or have sudden crowding.

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#118 2004-08-27 02:50:42

comstar03
Member
From: Australia
Registered: 2004-07-19
Posts: 329

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Wrong, Dook,

I am not taking about 1000's of yards /meters long but 100's of yards / meters long. They will be primary to future vessels , but they for transport of cargo, and people to Mars, they are required, to build a large marsbase rapidly, then mine, process and expand across the planet, It only took two centuries for the industrial process to commence and expand into the technological process that we are in now, and fuelled by both we can do it in a short term of time, ( 50-100 years ),

The 21st Century will be development of our Solar system resources on all planets and moons throughout the solar system.

I think also that star drive revolves around opening a gateway to hyperspace not going faster than light, and I think by accident humans have do that already, if you read the declassified reports of an experiment in US at the end of WW2 reproducing that experiment, and If successful that would provide basic hyperspace travel, then 22nd century onwards will be a blast.

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#119 2004-08-27 05:08:02

deagleninja
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-04-28
Posts: 376

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

smile

I know you are enthusiastic comstar03, and that's awesome. I wish more people had a passion for humanity settling the solar system. However, settling Mars from the Moon makes no sense.

Five hundred years ago, which would you rather have tried to build a colony at: North America or the Sahara Desert? The Moon does have metals, but is poor in everything else needed for a colony.

It might have a few lakes worth of water. This is enough to provide for a small colony of people with excellent recycling tech, but not enough to provide useful amounts of hydrogen and oxygen for air and fuel over any decent period of time.

The Moon has no atmosphere, true. But this is a minus, not a plus. Most aspiring spaceship builders would rather deal with atmospheric drag than have no protection from micrometeorites and hard radiation. In this case it makes much more sense for automation to use an asteroid than the Moon for resources.

As for colonizing Mars from the Moon, it can't happen. Don't forget the gravity difference. Somone used to the Moon's gravity would have a very hard time on Mars (if not fatal). It would be like trying to live under 2gs here on Earth. There is also the matter of dependancy on Earth for most of a lunar colony's supplies. Mars offers its colonists a chance for freedom and independance, the Moon does not.

And this is important. To be a true space-faring race our decendants must depend on themselves and the resources at hand. The Moon cannot offer this, Mars can.

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#120 2004-08-27 05:36:10

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

We will not be colonizing Mars from the Moon, what we will be doing is making and supplying the Cycler spaceships that will allow the colonisation of Mars not the flags and footprints that mars semi direct will cause. And it is easier to get access to the asteroids from the Moon than it is to get there from Mars so consider the Moon as our best way to industrialise space.

We will be getting people from Earth to do the colonisation but they need something of reasonable size to fly in to get there. If you want colonisation of Mars that is our only choice. Cyclers are the desired means to do this but they are large spacecraft and frankly too expensive to make on Earth and launch in parts. This is not the case for a mature Moonbase with a Mass driver which can lob parts anywhere in the earth system like the lagrange points where we would build these vehicles.

The advantage the Moon has with Mars is that it is close. Our communication and control of devices working on the Moon is exponentially easier that Telerobotics controlled from Earth can be done on the Moon where it is impossible with our current technology for Mars. Solar power is so much easier to get on the Moon than on Mars the problem of the 14 day cycle of night/day is easily sorted by use of a grid of solar panels around the Moon.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#121 2004-08-27 06:16:28

deagleninja
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2004-04-28
Posts: 376

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

'And it is easier to get access to the asteroids from the Moon than it is to get there from Mars so consider the Moon as our best way to industrialise space.'

Please explain. Aerobraking is an excellent means of slowing a spacecraft upon reaching its destination. The Moon has no atmosphere, therefore no aerobraking.

'The advantage the Moon has with Mars is that it is close. Our communication and control of devices working on the Moon is exponentially easier that Telerobotics controlled from Earth can be done on the Moon where it is impossible with our current technology for Mars. Solar power is so much easier to get on the Moon than on Mars the problem of the 14 day cycle of night/day is easily sorted by use of a grid of solar panels around the Moon.'

Or we could simply use solar arrays in space and not worry about the two-week cycle. The Moon is close, yes, but is this really an advantage? Who will be more independant, Luners or Martians? The Moon will always be a suburb of Earth.

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#122 2004-08-27 06:27:24

SpaceNut
Administrator
From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,967

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

The problem with any colonization is trade routes must be established. That in itself would aid private and commercial business to finally join in because they can see a profit is to be made.

A launching pad from a moon base colony is only one thing that it could or should be doing the other is useful mineral export trade from Earth to the moon as well as from the moon the Mars. In addition Mars should and probably be doing the same thing with exporting similar minerals to the moon as well as to Earth if one only takes the time to look.

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#123 2004-08-27 07:02:40

Grypd
Member
From: Scotland, Europe
Registered: 2004-06-07
Posts: 1,879

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Please explain. Aerobraking is an excellent means of slowing a spacecraft upon reaching its destination. The Moon has no atmosphere, therefore no aerobraking.

We are trying to get to these asteroids and they have no atmosphere so aerobraking just is not an option. Also there is a whole class of asteroid this the NEO class which are close to Earth and the Moon in fact they can pose a threat to us so using them to increase our space industry capacity is doing some good. And returning the Asteroids to a closer orbit will be done by ejecting some of there mass by use of mass driving a technology which the moon will have pioneered. And returning do you think any country will let you aerobrake an asteroid near a settled planet you must be joking. The Lagrange points are close enough.

Or we could simply use solar arrays in space and not worry about the two-week cycle. The Moon is close, yes, but is this really an advantage? Who will be more independent, Luners or Martians? The Moon will always be a suburb of Earth.

1) Yes solar arrays are a potential way to provide light to the Moon and keep the power flowing. This is technology that when pioneered on the Moon would be used where next, Mars. Mars is a distant cold world and to help terraforming more solar light is needed. 2) And the Moon being close not an advantage, All space facilities we put up will be closely linked to Earth, Earth is where your settlers will come from. It will be centuries before there is enough atmosphere and people on Mars to mean they can consider a limited independence. But in the Short term it is getting up there that we need to do and the Moon has more advantages than Mars at the moment and for the near term too. We use the Moon for what it is our space station that drives the expansion of man to space.


Chan eil mi aig a bheil ùidh ann an gleidheadh an status quo; Tha mi airson cur às e.

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#124 2004-08-27 07:51:05

John Creighton
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From: Nova Scotia, Canada
Registered: 2001-09-04
Posts: 2,401
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Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

Not to take away from the debate but I think the question is not to go to mars or the moon first but what technologies we can apply to mars and the moon. If we first develop the technology then whether we go to, the mars the moon, or an asteroid or all three can be the whim of the current administration. The technologies of artificial intelligence, machining, and telleroboits are all technologies that can be applied in all of these cases. The only difference between telleroboitcs on the moon and on mars is it might take 10 times as long to do the same things on mars. Anyway, develop the technologies for both destinations then go somewhere and I am happy.


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#125 2004-08-27 08:38:11

SpaceNut
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From: New Hampshire
Registered: 2004-07-22
Posts: 28,967

Re: The need for a Moon direct - and sustainabilty program

A lot of the designs have been tested within many of the universities and research labs but they have not been massed produced for real applied use.

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