So true. With all the money being spent in Iraq right now...we could easily fund a manned mission to Mars.
Except that it would compromise national security. Going to the moon is great, or Mars, or Uranus, but we've got to have military funding here at home too.
As long as we can stay away from the mantra of "there's so much to be done down here" a la Mondale, I'll be happy.
Here's my idea: colonize the Sahara desert. Everyone talks about colonizing the Moon and Mars, but if you're doing it for more places to live and more places to sprawl, why not use the Sahara? The Sahara is a helluva lot more habitable than Mars or the Moon, that's for sure.
DINGDINGDING. We have a winner.
I have tried to suggest this before as a way to put a challenge in front of human kind that is (almost) as hard as putting a base on the moon (and will span off lots of new concepts and ideas that some argue yet another space program would do) but would benefit millions of more people.
A space elevator as concept is as different from the conventional ways of putting things up there as you can get and will probably have a much higher ideas harvested/money spent ratio than any other space program currently considered. And much less expensive. It would boost the nanotube development for one.
Yeah, the Highlift space elevator was so impractical NASA donated several million dollars to help fund additional R&D...even though they fully well know it?s a pipe dream.
What would happen if the cable broke and came crashing to earth?
What would happen if the cable broke and came crashing to earth?
I was going to say, what happens if some terrorists get lucky and take that thing down? Well there is probably what, 10 years to build it and a hundred billion down the drain not to mention that would probably be the only thing taking stuff up and down at that point. 'Plan B, what's plan B guys, oh wait, that's those rockets we all scrapped because we thought we'd never use them again.'
I like the idea of space exploration, but until we get our nose out of everyone elses business the money will never be there. I'm not saying we have to take away our police force role (as we will probably always be), but scale it back and stop pulling stupid things like Iraq and making more enemies with countries who haven't really been problems. Then there are all those pork barrel projects. Like the healthcare bill, some 10 or 20 billion or more in those special interest projects. Um yeah. I'm not going to get into politics really, but we have a lot of things to clean up before we're going to secure funding for a new space-race.
Fancy whizbangs will only slow us down... we should make a giant sling-shot and hurl our ships into space! It will work I tell you!
You're not too far off base here. There were talks of using electromagnets to speed shuttles down a track that starts parallel to the ground but eventually curves perpendicular to it. This has the ability to 'slingshot' things into LEO. Never been implemented though.
The original speculation that GWB (a guy who cut funding for the ISS) might announce a US plan to return to the Moon (in reaction to China or in Star Wars Missile Defense contract) to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight generated lots of buzz.
Concurrently, the International Lunar Exploratory Working Group meeting in Hawaii formulated policy documents and attempted to identify achievable goals to motivate Lunar expedition planners.
As for the Space Elevator, lots of research is going into "unbreakable" nanotube materials, but there is plenty of discussion about building it on an offshore equatorial island in order to avoid the risk of a miles of broken cable crashing into a major metropolis.
Personally, I've always been a fan of Maglev propulsion for the Earth to sky part of the trip, and the Japanese just tested a Magnetically Levitated bullet train (two pretty heavy cars) at an impressive 581 km/h.
Start the track below ground and point it upwards and the ship is in LEO without wasting onboard propellant. [edit: Damn, Outsider beat me to the idea while I was adding links. Your punishment? Find Maglev lift links. ]
Then you crank up either an ION drive or something like Franklin Chang-Diaz' VASIMR plasma engine and explore.
Interesting, the second main objective of the JIMO mission:
"To develop a nuclear reactor and show that it can be processed safely and operated reliably in deep space for long-duration deep space exploration. The amount of power available from a nuclear reactor -- hundreds of times greater than on current interplanetary spacecraft -- would enable the use of more capable instruments and faster data transmission"
Comments
Originally posted by filmmaker2002
So true. With all the money being spent in Iraq right now...we could easily fund a manned mission to Mars.
Except that it would compromise national security. Going to the moon is great, or Mars, or Uranus, but we've got to have military funding here at home too.
As long as we can stay away from the mantra of "there's so much to be done down here" a la Mondale, I'll be happy.
Originally posted by Placebo
Here's my idea: colonize the Sahara desert. Everyone talks about colonizing the Moon and Mars, but if you're doing it for more places to live and more places to sprawl, why not use the Sahara? The Sahara is a helluva lot more habitable than Mars or the Moon, that's for sure.
DINGDINGDING. We have a winner.
I have tried to suggest this before as a way to put a challenge in front of human kind that is (almost) as hard as putting a base on the moon (and will span off lots of new concepts and ideas that some argue yet another space program would do) but would benefit millions of more people.
A space elevator as concept is as different from the conventional ways of putting things up there as you can get and will probably have a much higher ideas harvested/money spent ratio than any other space program currently considered. And much less expensive. It would boost the nanotube development for one.
Originally posted by DiscoCow
Yeah, the Highlift space elevator was so impractical NASA donated several million dollars to help fund additional R&D...even though they fully well know it?s a pipe dream.
What would happen if the cable broke and came crashing to earth?
stuff about the Sahara
Forgive me for being dense, but how would colonizing some giant sand box (that's still located on this little island/rock of ours) benefit humanity?
Originally posted by Outsider
What would happen if the cable broke and came crashing to earth?
If the cable snapped, most of it would go flying into space (with the counterweight), and the rest would burn up...
Or so they say.
Keep It Simple Stupid!
Fancy whizbangs will only slow us down... we should make a giant sling-shot and hurl our ships into space! It will work I tell you!
Originally posted by Outsider
What would happen if the cable broke and came crashing to earth?
I was going to say, what happens if some terrorists get lucky and take that thing down? Well there is probably what, 10 years to build it and a hundred billion down the drain not to mention that would probably be the only thing taking stuff up and down at that point. 'Plan B, what's plan B guys, oh wait, that's those rockets we all scrapped because we thought we'd never use them again.'
I like the idea of space exploration, but until we get our nose out of everyone elses business the money will never be there. I'm not saying we have to take away our police force role (as we will probably always be), but scale it back and stop pulling stupid things like Iraq and making more enemies with countries who haven't really been problems. Then there are all those pork barrel projects. Like the healthcare bill, some 10 or 20 billion or more in those special interest projects. Um yeah. I'm not going to get into politics really, but we have a lot of things to clean up before we're going to secure funding for a new space-race.
Originally posted by \\/\\/ickes
Think KISS (no, not the band)
Keep It Simple Stupid!
Fancy whizbangs will only slow us down... we should make a giant sling-shot and hurl our ships into space! It will work I tell you!
You're not too far off base here. There were talks of using electromagnets to speed shuttles down a track that starts parallel to the ground but eventually curves perpendicular to it. This has the ability to 'slingshot' things into LEO. Never been implemented though.
White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan has since publicly discounted the early rumours.
Concurrently, the International Lunar Exploratory Working Group meeting in Hawaii formulated policy documents and attempted to identify achievable goals to motivate Lunar expedition planners.
Top 10 Reasons to put humans back on the moon
If not NASA, how about AMAZON on the moon
As for the Space Elevator, lots of research is going into "unbreakable" nanotube materials, but there is plenty of discussion about building it on an offshore equatorial island in order to avoid the risk of a miles of broken cable crashing into a major metropolis.
Personally, I've always been a fan of Maglev propulsion for the Earth to sky part of the trip, and the Japanese just tested a Magnetically Levitated bullet train (two pretty heavy cars) at an impressive 581 km/h.
Start the track below ground and point it upwards and the ship is in LEO without wasting onboard propellant. [edit: Damn, Outsider beat me to the idea while I was adding links. Your punishment? Find Maglev lift links.
Then you crank up either an ION drive or something like Franklin Chang-Diaz' VASIMR plasma engine and explore.
There are a couple of old threads on alternatives to the Shuttle and Space exploration that are worth linking.
NASA has been having some fun with Movie Trailers too
http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/ion/present/hipep.htm
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/
Interesting, the second main objective of the JIMO mission:
"To develop a nuclear reactor and show that it can be processed safely and operated reliably in deep space for long-duration deep space exploration. The amount of power available from a nuclear reactor -- hundreds of times greater than on current interplanetary spacecraft -- would enable the use of more capable instruments and faster data transmission"
Interesting that in 2005 missions will be testing new landing technologies on Mars.