Re: Space Shuttle Grounding....depressing....

On Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:08:54 +0000 (UTC), "Tom" <npsdsa@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>
>Josh Hill wrote:
>>
>> I'm no great fan of President Bush's, and I question some details of
>> his proposal, such as the focus on the moon rather than Mars, but I
>> think he deserves credit for moving us in the right direction here --
>> for breaking the logjam that has had NASA running in circles for so
>> many years . . .
>>
>Deep Space exploration will most likely require extremely large ships
>to accomplish, due to the need for food and oxygen production, adn
>recycling of waste. It would not be feasible to launch such a vessel
>from Earth, so basically at some point they will need to build orbiting
>ship yards where deep space vessels can be assembled. My guess is that
>a moon base would be needed for that. (Supplies, personell, emergency
>services, seeing as how weather on Earth can affect the ability o take
>off in a shuttle).

That would work if the spacecraft were manufactured on the moon, but
we're pretty far away from that! So you'd have to launch the items
from earth, send them to the moon, assemble them, and launch them
again from the moon. It's a lot cheaper to assemble components in
earth orbit. AFAIK, no space docks will be necessary. Some may be sent
to Mars ahead of time, where they'll manufacture fuel for the return
voyage.

It seems to me that the best argument for using a new moon base on the
way to Mars is that it would give us more experience in long-term
living on an extraterrestrial surface, but I'm not sure that that's a
convincing argument -- we've had plenty of experience with long space
station stays and much of the testing can occur on earth, where an
environment can be arranged that's closer to the environment on Mars
than the environment on the moon is.

--
Josh

"You know I could run for governor but I'm basically
a media creation. I've never done anything. I've
worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But
that's not the kind of profile you have to have
to get elected to public office." - George W. Bush

.

Relevant Pages

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