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Hey I'm back, hope to be posting a lot more lately, been working on several different things, including my novel Sol3:Darkside.
Now that there's at least a framework in place, a new direction I think we need to try to tailor that iniative to ultimately achieve our goals.
One big issue I see I'd like to bring to your attention that I think we as Mars Society members can do is to try to minimize the amount of false information being put out by the press.
I've seen numbers in the press from 1 trillion to several 100 billion dollars. And almost every article states that the country will need to start over again and build a Saturn V type vehicle.
There was nothing to that extent in the Nasa's director's comments, and from what I can tell the Shuttle C and Shuttle V proposals are still viable and on the table for consideration.
Whats even more troublesome are certain remarks by so called "Space Experts", clearly motivated not by true analysis but by the fact that their own preferences for robotic missions isn't beging embraced.
The media is fair game for these so "Called Experts".
I suggest other members do what I am doing, when I see things in the press that aren't exaclly correct I use the feedback feature to tactfully give my opinion.
portal.holo-spot.net
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True these dtractors of Science are misleading ewith their numbers, even if it is 1 Trillion,
We are talking about a timeframe of 20-30 years which really only means 40 billion a year, they probably also include inflation over the next 20-30 years to pruposely mislead their audience. with inflation and an average of 3% growth for 30 years our GDP will be like 32 Trillion anyways... 1/32nd...
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I think a lot of us are hoping that once the infrastruture is being developed a future administration might take a look a the dates again and put the program on a more fasttrak. I think the timeline is more for political consumption than technical. You know the program will span several administrations.
Wishful thinkng, who knows
portal.holo-spot.net
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Or some penny pinching Democrat will cancel it altogether for more handouts?
What ever happened to the JFKs in the Democrats; almost all of the 9 dwarfs running now think it is a bad idea....
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Or some penny pinching Democrat will cancel it altogether for more handouts?
What ever happened to the JFKs in the Democrats; almost all of the 9 dwarfs running now think it is a bad idea....
Dean's stance seems to change with the phases of the moon, I think he's for a manned space program but feels that to acknowledge that now would be bad for his campaign run. Did he come out for Mars direct at one time??
portal.holo-spot.net
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Or some penny pinching Democrat will cancel it altogether for more handouts?
What ever happened to the JFKs in the Democrats; almost all of the 9 dwarfs running now think it is a bad idea....
Democrat John Glenn said on MSNBC that the Bush funding numbers are woefully insufficient to accomplish much of anything in space, as far as moon-bases and the like.
This from an Ohio newpaper:
The first American to orbit the Earth thinks President Bush's plan to build a permanent base on the moon and use it as a launching pad to Mars makes Bush look like a space cadet.
In a general sense, John Glenn loves the plan Bush unveiled Wednesday afternoon. But Glenn thinks the president's cost projections are so far off target as to be nearly weightless.
Once again, high marks for vision, low marks for offering a plan that might accomplish that vision.
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I don't believe any of the inital cost mention anything about a moon base, its just seed money to get the program going. And start basic design studies. reorientating the osp to more like something like a crew exploration vehicle.
Chinia thinks it can do it for less.
I think people fail to seem the significance of all this, for a long time now Mars has been a dirty word with the space agency.
I can imagine that in many nasa center around the country, there were little research groups looking at mars/moon related activity. The bring your own coffee donuts , kind of unofficial projects. Now they can all come together, in the open. (Thier employees can expense the donuts) .
Now the Nasa web page can actually feature info on Mars moon iformation.
Now when you go to mission space in florida, they anouncer can say in about 15 or 20 years, rather than "some indetermined " time in the future.
This is mearly setting a direction, a project plan if you will to start developing the technical designs.
Such things sometimes lead to paradym shifts in peoples attitudes, to early to say if thats what happening.
portal.holo-spot.net
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"Dean's stance seems to change with the phases of the moon, I think he's for a manned space program but feels that to acknowledge that now would be bad for his campaign run. Did he come out for Mars direct at one time??"
Dean doesnt Change as much as Kerry.. shesh.. for the war against it, for it again, now against it again...
I dont really know; In the debates they all spoke maliciously of it. Like only "going to find WMD" and we should all have more handouts instead.
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"Chinia thinks it can do it for less."
Of course they can, China has manipulated the Yuan so low it can do anything cheaper.
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Democrat John Glenn said on MSNBC that the Bush funding numbers are woefully insufficient to accomplish much of anything in space, as far as moon-bases and the like.
That's what I was sayin' Bill!
Some useful links while MER are active. [url=http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html]Offical site[/url] [url=http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/MM_NTV_Web.html]NASA TV[/url] [url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mer2004/]JPL MER2004[/url] [url=http://www.spaceflightnow.com/mars/mera/statustextonly.html]Text feed[/url]
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The amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth totals some 3.9 million exajoules a year.
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To give wgc proper respect:
I think people fail to seem the significance of all this, for a long time now Mars has been a dirty word with the space agency.
* * *
This is mearly setting a direction, a project plan if you will to start developing the technical designs.
Such things sometimes lead to paradym shifts in peoples attitudes, to early to say if thats what happening.
this is a significant point. We must relish at least this much.
= = =
Perhaps we can disagree about whether George W. Bush intends to follow up his speech with the application of genuine political muscle to accomplish the vision, yet wgc is correct, thanks to GWB it is now possible to discuss two points -
> > Going to Mars within a few decades is a legitimate goal; and
> > Re-allocating shuttle money to accomplish this goal is appropriate policy.
Both points are BIG wins for the Mars advocates.
The downside? The money Bush has proposed is like a $5000 deposit on a $200,000 house (which can be a shack or a mansion depending on your postal code).
Will our President follow through and help us "close escrow" - -actually buy the house on Luna and/or Mars within a few decades or will he simply hand the issue off to the next President (presumably in 2008) and wash his hands of space. Only his future commitment will answer that and the potential dismantling of all US lift capability, except Atlas and Delta is troubling to me.
Once Michoud Louisiana loses the ability to manufacture shuttle tanks and if we return to the Moon with a modular system launched by EELV, Mars is actually farther away then than it is today, IMHO.
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The plan implies a buyin by both congress and future administrations. Trying to do it internationaly would fail because that didn't work with the ISS . The reason the ISS survived was because of the international Obligations. The reason this plan may make it is because Congress was expected to do something after the CAIB report.
although the finding went over the heads of the average american, it was clear that the fault for Columbia was both with Nasa and the political environment. For congress to dismiss the plan as dead on arrival would be like an admission of guilt.
Secondly its about image building, a redefined more popular NASA may have a better time with future administrations, also it may be able to attract new talent ,because a large percentange of its work force is near retirement.
Nasa now has an office of Exploration : Think about that for a minute, a division devoted entirely to interplantary manned flights.
That was unthinkable just a few months ago.
portal.holo-spot.net
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I'd just like to say I've been e-mailin everyone from Robert Parks, all the major news networds anchors and reporters, and eventually last night I even e-mailed most of the democrat hopefulls all kinds of stuff.
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this is most of what i've e-mailed a bunch of people.
It seems to me that you all are stuck in a mental block of space exploration and whether we need to use humans or robots to do it. But, this misses the point. The real issue is whether we should be exploring or settling space. If it is just exploring, then we don't need human space flight. But, what about the economic benefits? Yes, you mentioned commercialization but did not really get very detailed in it, but quite frankly, there is hugh economic benefits from just tapping the hugh amount of natural resources just sitting out there. But as Parks would have it, we would just bring it all down here on earth. No, we are not going to just bring first asteroids and then mars down here on earth; better to learn how to live out there and keep those resources out in space where there is plenty of space to fit it all.
About those economic benefits. How about practically infinit free energy just from the sun. By tapping the solar energy out there instead of only getting a little bit of it that isn't blocked from our atmosphere(we can find ways of protecting ourselves from the radiation). How about so much natural resources that we can cover not only the initial cost of settling the moon and then mars, but paying out our national debt? In the end, by just tapping the natural resources of space, we'll be able to have so much money around, we'll be able to fund all our health care, national debt, national security and every other national concern with ease.
About the cost. It was 500 billion plus back in early 1990's because they didn't think of the obvious way of getting there inexpensively. Enter Robert Zubrin. I can't believe nobody has mentioned Robert Zubrin and his "Case for Mars" book. He showed that by living off the land, as opposed to bringing all the food for a return trip to and from mars, we can slash that cost of a mars mission to 40 billion(after presenting his ideas to Nasa, they added double redundancy bringing up his 20 billion cost to 40 billion)
The fact is that by moving our base of operations to a planet with lower gravity and living off the land, we can perform economic and scientific exploration to the same cost as just sending out robots from the surface of the earth. Sending robots to the rest of the solar system from the surface of the earth is so expensive because our gravity field is so strong that we have to make such big powerfull boosters. Compare the launching of a saturn v rocket that launched our astronauts to the moon with the spidery moon lander that split in two to get those same astronauts back to the earth. That is the cost savings of moving our base of operations off this planet. Then add the reduction of cost by living off the land; of using those outer space resources for food and rocket fuel, and you reduce the cost of getting to the rest of the solar system to less than just sending robots to that same solar system from the surface of the earth. I hope you got all that.
The fact is that space offers astronomical economic benefits which benefits everything else, and Zubrin found a way getting us settled out there where once where settled out there, the rest of the solar system comes very inexpensivelly. All this for the price of a small war. I think we can't afford not to go.
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Yea, I've been doing a lot of that too. I've kinda thinking I should start using Hush mail, because especially with the media I've been giving them harsh critzism, but some of the stuff they are printing is so outlandish. Their basically taking the amount spent on Apollo, adjusting for inflation over 15 years and comming out with some way out figures just for a lunar mission. There mars figures are astronomical.
that like saying you've spent a million dollars on health care, well you probably have over a 25 year period. But your per year amount is much lower.
Buggles the mind.
portal.holo-spot.net
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Or some penny pinching Democrat will cancel it altogether for more handouts?
What ever happened to the JFKs in the Democrats; almost all of the 9 dwarfs running now think it is a bad idea....
*Chuckles quietly.* Very good point.
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Or some penny pinching Democrat will cancel it altogether for more handouts?
What ever happened to the JFKs in the Democrats; almost all of the 9 dwarfs running now think it is a bad idea....
*Chuckles quietly.* Very good point.
I'm confused, I thought Dean kind of supported mars direct, now all of a sudden he's lashing out not only at Bush's program but the space program in general.
Does anyone know what his stand is??
portal.holo-spot.net
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Dean must have called the mothership and got different instructions.
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Dean must have called the mothership and got different instructions.
But wasn't he pushing mars direct, a few months back.
Incidentaly my story page and message board is now up.
portal.holo-spot.net
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