[extropy-chat] Moon news

[Amara Graps]

From: J Corbally <jcorb at iol.ie>, Sat, 10 Jan 2004 02:05:08 +0000

>Such a decision by NASA be a boon to other agencies like ESA.

One Big Difference between ESA and NASA:

ESA has no money of its own. The money for ESA projects comes from
the individual ESA member countries' space agencies in Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland
and the United Kingdom.

See here, for some details about how it operates:
http://www.esa.int/export/esaCP/GGG4SXG3AEC_index_0.html


>They can
>then push for funding to do the missions NASA would no longer be interested
>in.  Perhaps a lot less duplication of effort, and more cross-agency
>collaborations eg. ESA and China or India.

ESA is going through some large changes now. It looks very confusing to me.
The above URL might be obsolete in six months.

The one thing that I wish NASA might learn from ESA is how not to cancel
projects that have been fully designed and under preparation for several
years. It's a huge waste of everyone's time and money. Usually, once ESA
says a project is 'on', it goes forward, without worries of a future
cancellation.

>Then there's the scenario of having NASA run a moonbase on which a high
>tech lab can study samples dropped off by various unmanned ESA probes
>"patrolling" the galaxy.  Who knows, with a moon refinery and foundry,
>maybe it'll be Europe who mines the asteroid belt :)

well... there is a NASA / ESA mission to the asteroid belt that is
presently half dead now.

Amara

P.S. Bush's Moon news: I wonder how he intends to pay for it, given his
500 billion dollar deficit.
-- 

Amara Graps, PhD
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it