Posted on 03/20/2005 7:03:10 PM PST by KevinDavis
NASA has a new Vision for Space Exploration: in the decades ahead, humans will land on Mars and explore the red planet. Brief visits will lead to longer stays and, maybe one day, to colonies.
(Excerpt) Read more at spacedaily.com ...
Its not just about getting off this rock.
The day we establish a permanant colony on another body will be the day humanity could survive almost any cataclysm.
Supervolcanoes, nuclear war, giant asteroids, none of that will matter.
I agree.....
Amen...
Not to seem argumentative but it WILL matter a great deal to the ones who are flattened by one of the world catastrophes you are listing here! Maybe some people will survive but that is cold comfort to the dead ones, just as it is today!
Good evening.
That's really what getting into space is all about, isn't it.
Michael Frazier
The problem with that is that its still not economical.
In order to push private enterprise, they need to make a profit.
Inordinate amounts of money need to be spent just to push material into orbit, let alone to the moon.
I believe its better to go straight to Mars using the Robert Zubrin method, launching a return vehicle, landing it on Mars. Launching a fuel manfucturing device, landing it on Mars. Launching a habitat, landing it on Mars. Then launching the crew. Everything would be there already. Just connect it up when you get there. Or at the point when we reach it, most of it could be robotically prepared for humans already.
For the moon to work you would need a massive base and manufacturing center before it would become a viable launchpad.
Speaking in pure terms of "Big Picture", it won't.
Think of colonies on multiple bodies as cities in a nation.
A hurricane wipes out one city. We're still here. We may feel bad, but we live on.
Rather than having it all cease.
Any supernova explosion close enough to the Earth to cause a mass extinction would also affect anyone on Mars. Eventually the Sun will become a red giant. When that happens both the Earth and Mars will be swallowed up by the Sun.
Point 1
True, however read below
Point 2
Thats 5 billion years from now.
Whether or not the speed of light can be broken is up to debate, but we're easily within a hundred years of a viable antimatter craft. No, it won't be star-trekky, realistically an anti-matter engine is a fancy newtonian rocket.
Given that, we're looking at speeds around .9c from such an engine.
That would put stars about 35 light years away within somewhat "easy" reach of us.
Yes, but that's exactly the point. We need a massive base on the Moon if we want to have a large number of people living there. We need a manufacturing center there to give all those people jobs. By building a spacecraft "shipyard" and base on the Lunar surface, and a permanent colony in which the workers of that "shipyard" would live, the Moon Base could become the Pearl Harbor of space -- a space "island" that would bear the same relationwhip to Earth as the islands of Hawaii bear to the continental U.S.
Besides, the Moon is much better suited to the job of building and testing deep-space vessels than is the Earth's surface or orbit. The Moon has all the materials needed to build, fuel, and test spacecraft, and only 1/6 the gravitational pull of Earth, allowing us to build larger spacecraft. By building the Mars ships on the Moon, we can test them out in Earth-Moon space, allowing us to train the astronauts who will sail them while keeping them within reach of rescue if things go wrong. Once these shakedown cruises are complete and all the bugs are fixed in the ships, then we can fuel 'em up and send our now well-trained astronauts off to Mars in a seasoned ship!
The point is not to just go to the Moon and Mars. The point is to go, establish stable, self-sustaining colonies, and stay there. The goal is to settle these new worlds, not just visit them.
It would seem that we could get a lot farther starting from the moon, with so much less gravity, than from earth, no?
Testing and safety range, good point I didn't think of. =]
And let's make the moon a flat tax zone.
I agree. The rocket launched from the moon would probaly take less fuel.
Amen...
It would take a LOT less fuel. I'm not sure of all the calculations offhand, but its a huge difference.
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