Posted on 11/26/2004 6:41:06 AM PST by motife
Times of Oman - International News (Thursday, November 25, 2004)
Intense battle lies ahead to conquer moon
UDAIPUR — The next decade will see nations scrambling to build outposts on the moon with each adapting different strategies to use it as a base to explore space, according to scientists attending a conference on lunar exploration. The United States welcomes competition while the Europeans and other national space programmes favour a cooperative robotic village lunar base, a settlement where each nation has its own place on the moon, they said.
The Indians, like the Japanese, are aiming for a lunar mission to galvanise its scientific community while China’s plans are not immediately clear. “If they want to compete, then let them compete,” said Paul Spudis, planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins University and adviser to Nasa at the five-day International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon being held in the north Indian city of Udaipur. “It spurs innovation.”
The United States is planning a lunar orbiter by 2008 to be followed the next year by a landing mission. By 2015 it plans to put another man on the moon.
“The goal of the vision is to cut the chord from the earth and create the ability to go elsewhere in the solar system with any kind of capability we want, not just people but with robots or radars,” Spudis said.
The last man on the moon was Nasa astronaut Eugene Cernan on December 11, 1972, three years after Neil Armstrong became the first person to touch lunar soil on July 21, 1969. Other space powers, such as Europe, have plans to set up a robotic village on the moon by 2014 for a permanent lunar base to exploit resources and plan a trip to Mars.
“I think it can be an Olympic race where everyone gets the best from themselves. But it should not be a race where some others are prevented from the benefits of the Olympic exercise,” said Bernard Foing, director of the International Lunar Exploration Working Group.
“At some stage the moon is a great place to do things together. That is a concept we propose for the future,” said Foing, whose group coordinates the plans among international agencies including the US, Russia, Japan, China and India and Europe. He is also the chief scientist of the European Space Agency.
Japan will be the first to send an orbiter to the moon in 2006. China could follow, ahead of India’s unmanned lunar mission in 2007 or 2008. The European Space Agency plans to launch an orbiter to the moon by 2008 and a second mission, a lander, in 2009 or 2010 to be followed by a human flight in 2020.
Wu Ji, a scientist at China’s Centre for Space and Applied Research, said his country’s lunar programme would be the ‘third milestone’ after it sent satellites and, last year, a manned Earth orbiter.
“The lunar mission will be the starting point to go to deep space,” Wu said. “We are not talking about a manned mission. It is out of the question now. I cannot talk too much about our space programme right now.”
Madhavan Nair, chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation, said an unmanned lunar mission would upgrade the country’s technological capabilities and provide opportunities to planetary scientists.
Meanwhile, former director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, M. G. K. Menon, warned scientists not to colonise the moon. “One should not treat the moon as an object where we are all scrambling for just prestige and first-occupancy,” Menon said. The 1979 Moon Treaty, to prevent the moon from becoming an area of international conflict, has only been ratified by nine nations.
It has been rejected by both the United States and Russia. — AFP
But hey, we're sending a robot to bring back some rocks... ;)
Perfect place for the Muslims and liberals!
They can worship their "moon god" up front and personal.
We should have been there unstead of pi$$ing billions down the welfare rathole. We will always have problems right here at home, and that is all the more reason to pursue new horizons.
The Indians and the Chinese can talk all they want about colonizing the moon, but they are dreaming....
we and maybe the Russians are the only ones that could possibly be in position by next decade....
Menon went on to say, The institute should continue with it's primary mission, the fundamental research of tatas.
Well, at least there will be plenty of good restaurants there when the rest of us arrive!
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Remember the CF-105 Avro Arrow. Supposedly an aircraft designed and built in the late 50's by Canadian's can still out-perform the modern-day F/A-18 in some regards.
There's a reason for that. There's also a reason we only went to the moon once.
.....I think we went more than once.....
If the third world sees a future in space colonization then they should pursue that red herring ad infinitum. May we can talk the Mujahedeen into subsidizing space colonization....
The moon has already been claimed by the US 30+ years ago. So if they find oil there, we get the royalties.
Well, at least there will be plenty of good restaurants there when the rest of us arrive!
And laundries
If we had spent the moon shot money on solving the nuclear power waste problem, we'd have electricity too cheap to meter and could flip the bird to the Arabs.
Yes, I should have worded that different. You're right.
More like, there's a reason we haven't been to the moon in a long time and our trips were few.
So if I go to the moon after then, will I be given a low-interest loan to buy a 7-11.
A camel in a space-suit. Cool.
There's no water on the moon either. Just like home ahpooh.
Slurpies in space!
Right now it might not be very important, but if we were to send goods (and maybe people) to other planets, wouldn't it be less expensive, in terms of energy, to do it from the Moon since the necessary escape velocity would be lower ?
There is water on the moon. Quite a lot of it. A base on the moon is therefore viable, and would be the first stage in system colonisation.
As to why - there are a LOT of minerals floating around in space, and one day their extraction will be economically viable.
There really is no solution known to the waste problem, all postulated at that time have problems. The industry and gubmint seem to have settled on a 'bury it deep enough, far enough from where people are (now) and it will be OK' philosophy as a solution.
In 10,000 years, a lot can change, (We came out of an Ice age--where I sit was under 1 km of ice), sea level rose some 300 meters, and coastlines (especially) have been extensively remodeled.)
Needless to say, population movements will accompany those environmental changes, which won't cease, no matter how many treaties are signed. Given the changes in language and tecnology in the past 10 millenia, who knows where human culture will be by then, (up or down, both are possible).
IMHO, why confine yourself to one lifeboat when you can have two?
The potential for heavy manufacturing utilizing solar energy in space or on relatively airless planetoids is phenomenal.
Had we pursued this then, maybe we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with the Chinese going up there and dominating the planet with the threat of 'throwing' really large rocks.
But, more deeply, we have no frontier, no wild places to conquer or explore on the planet, not like opening space to exploration would bring. Humans need this sort of challenge or they sink into depravity.
If we squander the readily obtainable resource 'grubstake' we have on Earth-centric goals, we will go the way fo the dinosaurs. If we, as a species are to flourish, we need challenges which can be overcome and the opportunity to spread throughout the nearer planets and moons which we can inhabit and exploit. If we fail, we will become another biological footnote in the Earth's history.
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