Posted on 07/12/2005 7:28:59 PM PDT by KevinDavis
Los Angeles, CA, July 11, 2005 – In anticipation of this week's planned return to flight of NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery, the Space Frontier Foundation renewed its call for the orbiters to be retired. The Foundation, which for over 15 years has criticized the Shuttle system as too costly, urged NASA and the Congress to announce a firm date when the last orbiter will fly.
“If it were up to us the shuttle would never have flown in the first place,” said the Foundation's Rick Tumlinson. “Far from opening space to the American people, it has weighed down our space program with its bloated budgets, massive support network and tragic cost in terms of human life. It's time is passed. We should kill it as soon as possible, before more money gets wasted and, heaven forbid, anyone else gets hurt.”
(Excerpt) Read more at space-frontier.org ...
Two out of five have exploded killing 14 astronauts, half from ignoring the dangers of ICE on the rockets and half from trying to kiss the envirowackos ass and put on aa "enviromentally friendly" insulation. The damned things are too complicated and too expensive.
What was needed was a small orbiter only big enough to shuttle the crews to and from space and a seperate, much larger UNMANNED rocket for delivering cargo into space and instead, we got the Space Dump Truck.
No, it is not. That's the realization of a lot of us. If you spurn the idea of the X-Prize, how about this one:
1. Give the responsibility to the Marine Corps;
2. Tell them that many people will die;
3. Tell them that they will have very little money to do the job; and
4. Tell them that it is impossible.
We will be on Mars by 2015 or 2020, guaranteed.
And you don't need the Moon for a railgun or particle beam weapon - that's what SATELLITES are for. You can't maneuver a Moon fixed-base asset - but you can do that for a satellite.
The Moon offers nothing but green cheese and moonbat dreams.
We don't need anything from the Moon. We do need another 150-200 nuclear power plants and a waste storage facility.
And you don't need the Moon for a railgun or particle beam weapon - that's what SATELLITES are for. You can't maneuver a Moon fixed-base asset - but you can do that for a satellite.
The Moon offers nothing but green cheese and moonbat dreams.
We don't need anything from the Moon. We do need another 150-200 nuclear power plants and a waste storage facility.
No, a particle accelerator is a particle accelator.
Linear accelators encompass a much broader scope of the technology, and it's very feasible to stabilize the technology to the point of being able to accelerate complex groups of matter to high speeds.
Point taken but:
Right after the Constitution was adopted we found ourselves in a war.
The government at that time needed firearms and it found independent contractors that could supply the arms.
All to support the "General Welfare" and the "Common Defense" thingies.
During the Cold War the needs were similiar and all kinds of tech was developed to fight it.
Space shuttle was among them.
There is a lot of discussion about the Constitution and how it is relevant right now but I personally think this one thing that the is obligated to do.
So in response to Napoleon's invasion of Russia the Csar positions the entire Russian Army on the border of Mongolia?
What would a moonbase be defending other than itself and how would it mount a defence?
You need real estate and power for a railgun. Particle beams are power hungry and dissipate in atmosphere (unless you want to talk about X-Ray lasers).
Satellites cannot mount enough solar power cells for a decent railgun, at least not and still be launched from Earth. Satellites can also be killed by other satellites.
The Moon has an abundance of real estate, solar power opportunities, and it can't be shot down.
By the way, the restriction on nuclear power plants isn't at the government level. It's all the NIMBYs who don't want them, and all the envirowackos.
Satellites make perfect weapons platforms for directed beams and small rail cannons, but if you wanted to totally devastate an area of the planet by whipping large projectiles at beyond terminal velocity, you'd need something with a big more mass behind it.
Like Skyptr is saying, a presence on the moon protects EVERYTHING. Who would attack you when you could execute mass destruction without the pesky side-effects of nuclear radiation and what-not?
It's our nuclear deterrent to the next level.
A moonbase could be used offensively to drop rocks on terrestrial targets (find Osama, see Osama, see Osama - and the rest of the surrounding countryside - vaporize 30 minutes later when the lunar rock mass hits his hut), and the same linear accelerator it would use to do that could also shoot up any approaching projectiles or craft.
The moon is the ultimate high ground.
Good point, if we were to try to dominate Earth's orbit by using a network of direct-beam satellites, we'd have to get there before anyone, or any newly launched satellites deemed suspicious would simply be destroyed.
You can place a satellite in ANY orbit you want, fool. Geosynchronous ones are 23,000 miles out. NASA has/had several space probes that operates in the lunar orbit - 250,000 miles out. You can make a satellite MORE massive than any moonbase (because of zero G and no need to land) and you can place it ANYWHERE in ANY ORBIT and it can MOVE.
Why do you persist in playing a losing hand?
And let's not forget that with the proper targeting equipment, an accelerator cannon capable of hurling meteor-like projectiles towards the surface could also turn a tiny speck of lunar dust into all you would need to sharpshoot any incoming ordinance. The ultimate sniper bullet.
There are only a few flights left for the Space Shuttle anyway. Then it will be up to the next design to get men to the moon and elsewhere.
Now, if you want to justify a space program on the basis of defense, then I would agree with you entirely (see my somewhat, but not totally, tongue-in-cheek post above about the Marine Corps). But our politicians surprisingly don't have the guts or whatever to sell it that way. World opinion would be, oh, so bad. Don't militarize space, etc.
Whatever I think of Mr. Bush (not much, I confess), one of his huge positive attributes is that he doesn't care about world opinion. This is the time to debate that very question.
We keep those hidden from the humans who have yet to master spell chack....;-)
The powers given by the people to the government to "promote the general welfare" are enumerated specifically in the clauses that follow the preamble. Those powers are very limited. You'll need to point to the one that includes operating massive bureaucracies.
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