Communists on the moon !

[Cipher7071]

Anyone who is seriously interested in the moon topic might want to have a look at the December 2003 issue of Scientific American, specifically "The New Moon," by Jerome M. Siegel. A taste of it can currently be found at Scientific American. The article discusses reasons for further lunar exploration. A memorable statement made by the author is "The return of astronauts to the moon requires a political rationale, not a scientific justification." This may suggest why the Chinese want to go the moon. Not only is there much left to discover, they may also simply want to show the rest of the world that they can do it.

[President_Elect_Shang]

I thought you would say that, so I devised part two. First off to keep the core warm (we are missing the effects of Jupiter’s gravity) we will go to the desert and pay this guy a lot of money to build a machine that will drill down to the center of Europa. Once there we will use the new “Bend Reality Bomb” (BRB) to keep the center molten and turning. Next we will designate half for the game reserve and the other half for a trash dump. In just a matter of years with all our garbage sent up there we will be able to make up for the mass difference. Don’t forget though for our ship we will need a carefully selected crew of which only two (one man one woman) will be allowed to return. Should more return we will draw lots and shot the losers.

[Cyrien]

Actually the belief that robots are just as good or better than people has been shown to be flawed in several real life applications.

In the establishment of fake Mars bases on islands around the Arctic regions when using robot probes to explore many intersting things were missed. Whole colonies of algae on the sides of rocks above the level of the robot view. Cracks on the surface of the landscape that showed large scale water erosion were missed due to the lack of scale of the small robots.

When people dressed in mock space suits went out they saw and exlpored all these things that they missed when using the robots. And of course when they were controlling the robots there was no long time delay between response and commands.
To be fair you can do things with robots that you can't do with people, but the oppossite is also true and needs to be recognized. Robots are only programmed and people can think and they have totally different scales when used observationally.

Robots are a tool and we should fully use them but we should never expect them to fully be able to replace humans. They are cost effective and can give us a nice and relatively detailed preliminary report. But they can't replace humans and do all the things humans would do, just as humans can't do all the things robots can do.

Thus there are in fact scientific rationals for going with people. Just look at what the people who went to the moon found that no one had previously suspected. The hovering of the dust, the thickness of the regolith, etc.

[ December 13, 2003, 21:30: Message edited by: Cyrien ]

[Cipher7071]

I did not mean to suggest that robots would be be better observers than actual astronauts. Nor is it likely that any particular robot will even approach that level of awareness any time soon. Still, perhaps using a variety of different kinds of robots working together, we can achieve better results than we now do. The point is not whether people are better. There is no question about that. But, during times when money for such projects is scarse, it may well be a matter of sending robots or nothing at all.

[Narrew]

You know those large machines that make tunnels (chunnel and other tunnels), we need to get one of those babies up to the moon, then start boreing, of course we wont have an easy access to water to make the cement, but I am sure we can think of something to stengthen and seal the walls.

One of the things I wonder about is who owns what. I think it is whoever gets there first and is occupying it. Ohh I am sure there is some LAW on the books, but that law don't mean squat till more than one person/country is up there actually going places.

I would like to see a post on the moon, though some of the books I have read say that the moon is just another gravity well. If there was a Base in one of the Lagrange points, that makes more sense (to the authors).

I have read one of the big things would be to build at the pole's and make a large solar array so it could always face the sun as the moon rotates around the earth, that way they would get the max amount of energy, then I thought if the solar panels acted like a sail then we would have to have a twin at the south pole otherwise the moon would start to spin, BUT if you have a panels on the north and south, then is would be a sail then perhaps it might wobble a bit as it rotates around the earth.

[JurijD]

hehe, Its really interesting to see how discussions can get derailed I read the whole post again and I saw it go from life on Mars to Europa to a discussion on Communism to the Middle east (yeah, that has to come up sometime )

Back to the Moon... I think space tourism could really open up space. I mean if we can make going to space profitable and fun for everyone we can eventually start channeling funds to exploration/development and colonize the moon.

Hope those Xprize guys do it soon... does anyone know when the first launch is planned for?
(better star saving up those 100 grand lol

[Loser]

Sure L4 and L5 are great places to put stuff if you want to send it somewhere else on the cheap, but they're not such great places to work.

Microgravity is very inconvenient. Not only is it difficult to keep humans healthy in microgravity, but it's hard to work, to move things around (inertia and torque messing with you), and many machines must be built very differently to work without gravity.

The lower gravity on the moon would still be troublesome, certainly, but it would help.

Before someone brings up the spinning-wheel space station concept I'll point out that it is very difficult to do right. The problem is that as people move through the station, the station itself will move around in space. A great deal of fuel will be needed to keep it at it's intended location.

You might remember seeing pictures of American Astronauts running around the inside of Skylab, no? Yeah, they were knocking that like box all of the place while they did that, and Skylab was not properly fitted to keep it's orbit anyway.

Since an object near either the L4 or L5 positions will be gently pulled toward the actual specific Lagrange Points, you might be able to put a spinner up there and just let it go, depending on the attraction of Luna's Trojan points to keep your station where you want it. I don't think that's such a good idea, myself, and every damn thing in the station would have to hold real still when time comes for anything to dock with it.