american space program set in motion

http://www.space.com/news/bush_speech_040114.html

and about time too......

at last the americans are going to do something a lil more useful

i just hope there isn't another NASA 'disaster' in the meantime. They should send someone important (like bush) then you know there's going to be no human error. Talk about meticulous. :D

living on the moon would be fun... especially when you kick something and it just floats off...dam lost another ball...!

I think it's a foolish way to do it. The best way to get to mars and the moon is to make them homesteadable. This will wind up costing hundreds of billions of dollars, just so that Bush can distract American voters just before the next presidential election.

NASA is a farce and should be immediately busted up and sold. The Outer Space Treaty and Moon Treaty should be shredded. People should be allowed and encouraged to own celestial objects, because otherwise, we aren't going anywhere for a long time.

Capitalism Colonisation Hey El Pres

Damn straight!

I think it'll be pretty cool, but the reality is... that even if we do colonise the moon and mars, it wont be till late in our lifetimes before normal people can live there.. and even then you'll need to be loaded

NASA realistically has no real space ships and/or other vessels that is capable of reaching Mars or even the Moon. The radiation outside the protection of this planet would kill everyone on board, even in a NASA shuttle.
They need to use something that isn't antiquated.
Tip to NASA, it's called reverse engineering :wink:

Quote from Odyssey:
NASA realistically has no real space ships and/or other vessels that is capable of reaching Mars or even the Moon. The radiation outside the protection of this planet would kill everyone on board, even in a NASA shuttle.
They need to use something that isn't antiquated.
Tip to NASA, it's called reverse engineering :wink:

lol, i guess thats why neil and everyone else died before they got to the moon right?

"at last the americans are going to do something a lil more useful"

how is this at all useful. as el pres said, this whole space-exploration issue is simply a charade to distract voters from the amazing short-comings of the bush administration.

there's no real reason for us to colonise another planet at the moment. we do not have the technology to make a mission like this a feasible option for space travel. i say wait till we've worked out how to compact nuclear generators, created a fusion powered rocket or similarly distant objective and then work out whether it is actually necessary for any such mission to occur.

same things were said back in the days of the early colonisations.

And Definately beats going in and blowing up lil nations.

The whole point of bushes push is to create the technology to move forward. We need goals to push technology further

just like the lottery, got to be in it to win it...

Technology is not just going to manifest itself, you have a goal, then you will find a way to the goal, you will find problems, and then ways to overcome problems, and in the process will come new technology

im just glad there are people out there with not just the dream to move forward but the means and determination to push forward.

unfortunately.. his name is George.

Chances of seeing any movement during the next ten years is minimal. Basic missions can be done in a very short time such as within 6 months if necessary. But this is simple stuff like retreiving a satelite etc. On the other hand, building a perminant base on the moon?

First of all, lets take the space station, which isn't even COMPLETE yet, and is pulling resources from all over the world. It's been in planning for nearly 20 years. They only started production of it 3 years ago, and wasn't habitable until recently. Even then, it's something like only 10% complete.

Now there's the moon base. That's going to at LEAST take another 5-7 years to design, and then fabricate the parts. Then we'll have to send them to the moon. Chances are this will be an automated process as well, so a new program will need to be designed for this... At another couple of bill' to the budget.

Is it just me, or is Bush a complete retard for even thinking we can... Hang on... the AMERICAN's can cope with such an expendature on it's own.

Did anybody else hear his speach regarding it?

Send MAN to the moon? America?
I personally hope China get a foot ahead. Good on 'em. They need something to lift the country. God knows they've gotten ten times better since the fall of their dictator. And you know what, China will do it at about .5% of the cost. Sure it'll take slave labour, but they'll get it done, becuase they'll take pride in thrashing the yanks.

FCUK George pisses me off!

Quote from P-air:
same things were said back in the days of the early colonisations.

Many of them were performed by private individuals - such as the US.

Quote from P-air:
And Definately beats going in and blowing up lil nations.

It certainly does. But a government which can raise billions for space programs is also a government which can raise billions for war. When you create a massive government, you create the necessary preconditions for large scale warfare. This is just one reason why big government, in any form, is a damn fool idea.

Quote from P-air:
The whole point of bushes push is to create the technology to move forward. We need goals to push technology further

I suspect that it has more to do with distracting Americans from a pair of going-nowhere occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq. It won't be long before the yanks realise what the Russians and the English have realised before them: Afghanistan and Iraq are suckholes for treasure and blood, and little more than that. The US is just the latest imperial aspirant to ignore the lessons of history.

Quote from P-air:
just like the lottery, got to be in it to win it...

This is a poor example, as the odds of winning if you don't enter are almost indistinguishable from having entered. Lottos are a clever tax on human nature, and space programs by governments are a bad idea.

Quote from P-air:
Technology is not just going to manifest itself, you have a goal, then you will find a way to the goal, you will find problems, and then ways to overcome problems, and in the process will come new technology

This is very hand-wavy; and I would suggest that the major advancements of the past century had more to do with private researchers in corporate labs (eg, the silicon chip, developed in Bell Labs), or researchers at universities, most of them also private and based in the USA (such as nuclear fission, initially developed at the University of Chicago).

Quote from P-air:
im just glad there are people out there with not just the dream to move forward but the means and determination to push forward

What I'm trying to say is this is the wrong way to go about it. The way to get space explored and colonised efficiently and usefully is to allow celestial objects to be owned by whoever takes physical possession of them. This is called homesteading, and the law of homesteading is well-established.

The cheap and easy way for the US to support a "man on mars" mission would be to say: "Go to mars, stay there for a year, and come back, and we will recognise your ownership of mars".

In a few decades, it will have happened with private funding, probably through competing consortia of large corporations and banks. No need to build a bloated government to make it happen. Leave it to people who prepared to risk their own dime. The same unforeseen technologies you expect will develop just as well, or better, in a commercial context; and at the end of it all Mars will belong to somebody who wants to do something more useful with their investment than planting a stupid flag on it.

Gotta start somewhere.

Quote from El Presidente:
The best way to get to mars and the moon is to make them homesteadable.

don't you mean habitable?

No, I meant homesteadable.

It's a legal state of affairs where a private individual takes possession of previously unowned property.

As to making planets habitable (terraforming), it's a chump's game. Far better to build O'Neill colonies. With carbon nanotubes you could build huge orbital colonies a lot sooner, and with a lot less fuss, than terraforming a planet.

"This week President Bush can create a real space program. Now, our space program is based on Earth and supported exclusively on the backs of taxpayers. Bush and the U.S. Congress can enable U.S. companies to establish new lunar industries as part of a permanent U.S. base on the Moon," Criswell told SPACE.com.

Schmitt said that going to the Moon accelerates going to Mars in a number of ways. Just for starters:

you get a low cost, heavy lift booster into the inventory, perhaps largely paid for by private investors if you do it right;
you get helium-3 fusion technology that can be adapted to an Earth-orbit to Mars-orbit continuous acceleration-deceleration rocket;
you get lunar hydrogen, water, oxygen and food to reduce the Earth launch mass until a Mars settlement is self-sufficient;
you get Mars surface facilities designs derived from lunar designs that will have indefinite life engineered into their construction and maintenance strategies; and
you get experience in working in deep space again, a much less forgiving environment than earth-orbit.

"I pray that the White house will insist that the effort be a partnership with private investors, based on the commercial potential of helium-3 fusion, as well as the ‘bridging businesses’ to get there," Schmitt said.

A few points about building a base on the moon.

Zubrin, who has done by far the most work on designing and planning a mission to mars, says that if you want to go to Mars, go to Mars. Going to the moon first is a waste of time.

The main reason is that the cost savings are completely fallacious.

Firstly, in any case, it takes less energy to get from Earth to Mars than it does to get to the Moon; it just takes a lot longer.

Secondly, while you might make launch savings on Earth by sourcing oxygen from the Moon, you still need to build a Moon base at vast expense first, and have it running for a few years. Why launch oxygen extraction equipment when you can just launch oxygen?

As for helium-3, studies have been done showing that it will cost more per final unit of energy than you get from coal, still the world's leading source of electricity. It will cost you millions of dollars per tonne of ore, and even then nobody has really worked out a cheap, efficient and lightweight way to get helium-3 out of lunar regolith. He-3 power generation is a pipedream.

The Earth has hundreds of years of coal supplies remaining, not to mention literally thousands of years supplies of fissible material if you choose to use breeder reactors in your nuclear fuel cycle. It would in fact be slightly cheaper to extract uranium from seawater than He-3 from the moon.

If you're looking for an excuse to get to the moon, Mars is not it. I'd suggest that American talk about moonbases has a lot more to do with Chinese talk about moonbases. See also Antarctica.

wow el presi, I am impressed.

You will make a very good politicain there dude.

Usually people mean that as a kind of insult.

I hear "you'd be a good politician" or somesuch whenever I explain why Expensive Proposition A is in fact an Expensive Proposition.

I mean heck, my dad used to do this sort of thing to me when I was a kid, designing combined hovercraft/submarine antarctic exploration vehicles; I never told him he'd make a good politician!

I'm as crazy about space as the next guy, but right now space is hellaciously expensive. I believe it would be done for less and done better of private individuals could own celestial objects, and that's why I object to government space programs.

Don't get me wrong. I personally would love to go to the Moon and Mars for a holiday someday. That would be so cool it hurts. But it's a ways off yet, especially while we continue this cold-war thinking about how to get into space.

My interest in space is not for me to personally go to the moon nor mars, but I want to see humanity get established in space, I am all for the advancement of science and technology. By whichever means, I just wish we could hurry up and start doing something. I am all for opening some peoples eyes to the possibilities.

I am not going to apologise for saying you would make a good politician, as it is you that have taken an insult where it was intended to be a compliment. You are very articulate in getting your point across, generating an opposing view on whatever people post, regardless of topic. Not many people are able to put a point across regardless of how they feel about it. For example you oppose some posts with points of your own, yet when a post comes up later that support or agree with your earlier points, you have the ability to oppose them also. It is this I deduce you would make a good politician. As a promoter and member of the ULC I thought you had strong feelings in regards to becoming a politician. It is always easier to bring an idea down, than it is to support it, dreamers dream or new ways of doings things, it is the critiques who make the dreamers turn thier dreams into reality.

El Presidente shut up..

I've said it once, I'll say it again - I'll become a politician only if I can't do something productive with my life.

Being president of the ULC means that I want the university to have a liberal club. It also means that I'm keen on liberalism in its classical form.

Modern politics is a long way from classical liberalism. Becoming an auctioneer for forcefully acquired property is not my idea of an honourable profession.

I hear the passion argument a lot; I have passion but it is for something different than you think. I have a passion for freedom. The ULC's logo has the motto "Liberty, Property, Democracy". I am committed to those ideals because they represent the bedrock of civilisation.

I want to see us develop into a space-faring civilisation, and I say to you that it will take private property to make it happen. Until then it will be left to a quasi-military elite to see space. Hardly the way to move into space, I think.

If I may make a suggestion, I would say that going into space the best way is better than going just any old way and for any old reason.

And no, soloman, I won't. :P

[edit: additional]
On problem here is that online discussions lack a lot of non-verbal cues. When people tell me that I'd make a good politician, it's usually something like an insult. Occasionally it is a genuine compliment. I can tell which is which from their voice, facial expression etc. Hard to do online.
[/edit]

Quote from P-air:
My interest in space is not for me to personally go to the moon nor mars, but I want to see humanity get established in space, I am all for the advancement of science and technology. By whichever means, I just wish we could hurry up and start doing something. I am all for opening some peoples eyes to the possibilities.

im with you there. To go where humans were not designed to go, to succeed where we initially failed; this definitely is one of the driving forces for me personally and my interests 8)

i don't get it - why do we NEED to do this shit...they should sell NASA and spend all the money on 3rd world countries......

Quote from exodus:
i don't get it - why do we NEED to do this shit...they should sell NASA and spend all the money on 3rd world countries......

Nah that won't help the 3rd world nations.

/enrobes Flameproof clothing

Just feed one half to the other half

/disrobes Flameproof clothing

Quote from exodus:
i don't get it - why do we NEED to do this shit...they should sell NASA and spend all the money on 3rd world countries......

why do we NEED to help third world countries?

X PRIZE IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT NASA'S FISCAL YEAR 2005 BUDGET INCLUDES $20 MILLION IN COMPETITIVE PRIZES CALLED "CENTENNIAL CHALLENGES." X PRIZE IS PROUD TO HAVE WORKED WITH THE LEADERSHIP OF NASA TO HELP CREATE THIS PRIZE CONCEPT AND CONGRATULATES THE ADMINISTRATION ON ITS BOLD INITIATIVE.

02.06.04
CENTENNIAL CHALLENGES
"[This] request includes funding to establish a series of annual prizes for revolutionary, breakthrough accomplishments that advance exploration of the solar system and beyond and other NASA goals. Some of the most difficult technical challenges to exploration will require very novel solutions from non-traditional sources of innovation. By making awards based on actual achievements instead of proposals, NASA will tap innovators in academia, industry, and the public who do not normally work on NASA issues. Centential Challenges will be modeled on past successes, including 19th century navigation prizes, early 20th century aviation prizes, and more recent prizes offered by the U.S. government and private sector. Examples of potential Centennial Challenges include very-low-cost space missions, contests to demonstrate highly mobile, capable, and survivable robotic systems, and fundamental advances in technical areas like lander navigation, spacecraft power systems, life detection sensors, and nano-materials."

I like the bounty-funding model, because it's one step closer to private property in space.

Here we go. Might get there a bit faster now.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/17/1076779932684.html

I believe the chinese will get to the moon before the americans will have a chance to get shit together.

This will piss the americans off no end. We probably would not even be aware what the chinese are doing until they are nearly ready to go. Once this happens the Nasa will have a Budget beyond belief and the support from the government and people. It will be like the 60's space race all over again.

I would say by the end of this decade we would see another major space race between america and the Chinese. This will get the ball rolling again on space exploration very fast.

As for a Mission to mars. NASA has a hell of alot of work to do. Be lucky to see it happen in my lifetime i think.

Personally I thought a 2.27 million trillion trillion kg diamond would be enough persuasion :P

Competition is without a doubt the one thing that will get these countries moving. I'm all for Space exploration. It holds the answers to soo many questions.

Well this is what Mars says:

[Image: http://files.australianalliance.org/PUBLIC/users/swisso/forum_pics/mars_spiritcolor.jpg]

Seriously though we as a soceity need a challange to take a step forward.