[extropy-chat] Re: NASA going back to the moon

Tue Sep 20 10:24:03 UTC 2005

by the time that men will return to the moon
,according to the latest Nasa proposal, it will be
around the mark of the 50th anniversary of the first
landing.
At that time slide rule and paper pads were still<
much in use with engineers, portable calculators nor 
fax machines were invented, not to mention the pc or
internet.
After half a century of progress nasa is proposing the
same old technolocy, entirely disposable system, high
costs, even parachute landing in the prairies.
While return to the moon and future human expansion is
a must, such approach will, if approved and not
canceled during the future years, lead to the
followig:
-creation of a station in the moon, after 100
billions, excluding cost overruns, spent on throw away
hardware, 
-abandoning of the station when they finally will
discover that each housekeping, and useless for
science or manufacturing purposes, mission will cost
billions of dollars
-further 50 years setback for the space plan
At this point Nasa and the participating agencies
should have the courage to :
-abandon the space shuttle as a vehicle that didn't
reach its design goals (slashing accessibility costs
to space ), is costly and dangerous 
-abandon the space station as a useless engineering
nightmare
it has no mission , no purpose and its design is
complicated, expensive and dangerous to complete
-start a space transportation system plan with
entirely reusable, commercial airline type of
operation system for orbital accessibility, including
a tug for out of orbital< missions , a cycler for moon
or mars missions, entirely reusable and based in a
simple space station for overhaul and maintenence,
completed with two way landers from the cycler to the
land stations
-implement a space infrastructural system to support
the transportation system with orbital and land
stations   around  main bodies
Once such system will be operational and managed by
private enterprise, every mission will be possible and
affordable and the conditions for space development
will be met
The proposed return risk a further half a century
setback, mankind cannot afford that.
--- Elaine Walker <elaine at ziaspace.com> ha scritto: 

> Hi all,
> 
> It thought I'd contribute some information about the
> pro-space community's 
> reaction to NASA's back-to-the-moon plans.
> 
> There are very mixed feelings within the pro-space
> community about NASA's 
> back-to-the-moon plans which were just announced.
> I'm still trying to 
> decide where I stand, personally. I tend to agree
> with SAS's arguments for 
> why Apollo style is the wrong way to go, however, I
> want NASA to succeed 
> with this one! It's incredible that NASA has this
> opportunity! I hope they 
> don't muck it up or come up with a dead-end plan. If
> they don't 
> incorporate enough infrastructure (ie. if they build
> big apollo rockets 
> that are thrown away each time) and don't
> incorporate any orbital assembly 
> into the plan (which they'll need if they want to,
> say, go to Mars 
> eventually!), this could be a dead end. This plan
> was just released and it 
> may change. It probably won't change much though.
> Radical changes within 
> NASA would have to occur - people would have to be
> fired, entire NASA 
> offices closed, a mature bureacracy reworked from
> the inside out - in 
> order to do it the RIGHT way. So maybe it's the
> wrong way or no way at 
> all. I'd be interested in your opinions!
> 
> 
> The Space Access Society's most recent update has
> some good arguments for 
> why it's a BAD idea for NASA to do it Apollo style.
> (The Space Access 
> Society's sole purpose is to promote radical
> reductions
> in the cost of reaching space.)
> 
>      
> http://www.space-access.org/updates/sau112.html
> 
> 
> The National Space Society supports the plan. (NSS
> has a reputation for 
> being NASA's cheerleaders. Although they have tried
> hard to get away from 
> that stereotype in the last few years, they seem to
> be cheering for NASA 
> at the moment.)
> 
>       http://nss.org/news/releases/pr20050919.html
> 
> 
> I'm not sure yet what the official stance of the
> Space Frontier Foundation 
> is, but I assume it will be somewhere in between...
> A press release will 
> probably pop up soon here:
> 
>       http://www.spacefrontierfoundation.org
> 
> 
> Just a heads up... When all is said and done, the
> Space Access Society is 
> usually RIGHT - usually the ones to say "We told you
> so". I've notice that 
> with just about every pro-space issue. That scares
> me in this case because 
> I really want NASA to succeed with this one!
> 
> 
> -Elaine
> 
> ----------------------
> Elaine Walker
> elaine at ziaspace.com
> 
> Mars Projects Manager and Advocate
> Space Frontier Foundation
> http://www.mars-frontier.org
> http://www.spacefrontierfoundation.org
> 
> Region 8 Chapters Organizer
> National Space Society
> http://www.nss.org
> 
> U.S. Groups Team Leader
> Space Program Advisor
> Extropy Institute
> http://www.extropy.org
> 
> Pro-Space-Pop Music
> http://www.ziaspace.com/ZIA
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>
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