Wooo hoo, we're goin' to Mars!!

[ScatterPlot]

Just read about what Bush announced about NASA and what all will be going on. Here's an article:

http://www.comcast.net/News/DOMESTIC//XML/1501_Science/44c0ae14-a71e-4dc5-b2da-011d60fe842b.html

I think it's pretty awesome myself. Comments?

[p8ntball1016]

First were going to pull out of the ISS and discontinue the shuttle. Then we will go to the moon. Then mars. I honestly think that all of this is very stupid. We spent who knows how much on the ISS and pulling out could jeopardize the project even more than Columbia did. Plus, we already proved we could go to the moon, so why do we need to do it again? Not to mention I think it is a little early to start planning manned missions to Mars.

[Bluestrike_2]

about time

shoulda started this a decade ago...

[ScatterPlot]

He didn't say pull out, he said "done with obligations." That means that they've finished their part of the building, not that they're just stopping completely.

[Bluestrike_2]

the technological benefits from going to the moon could be amazing.

Imagine an entire orbiting ring of huge solar panels across the equator of the moon. Or HUGE solar panel fields across the moon's surface, with settlement colonies dotted along the landscape, connected by high-speed transport trains.

Then realize that energy could be collected and beamed down from the moon to power stations across the earth. This would be the equivalent of waste FREE energy.

Then realize that solar panels are required to be built in special laboratories(sp?)that require a relatively low atmosphere in it(correct me if I am wrong.) The Imoon has it.

If we as a planet can work together for this goal, our species would receive many benefits. We could literally eliminate war IF we ALL were to concentrate on space colonization. Just need bigger ships.

This will be costly, but we ALL need to work together, not just one nation. All nations should.

Before I get flamed, think about this. A century ago, FLIGHT was inconceivable. Today it is common occurance. 60 years ago, SPACE TRAVEL was considered impossible.

Now, this is a huge step forward that many will support.

A Lunar Space Colony, time to move forward...........

[MiniMag84]

How do you "beam down" energy from the moon?

Also, if every nation in the world worked together to create one fantastic type of cheese, it could prevent international war. Sure it would keep them occupied, but how would it make pakistan like india any more? I don't mean to be bashing you, but it doesn't make any sense. "Hey Lithuania! Throw down a few billion for this new project, it'll be great!" It just seems illogical.

How are we going to pay for this? I might be wrong, but didn't we just pour like 89 billion into iraq's reconstruction plan?

[e mag]

How the heck would a space colony eliminate war?

[gamarada717]

Originally posted by MiniMag84
How do you "beam down" energy from the moon?

A ginormous telephone wire.

[Rather]

What I would like to know is what is Bush doing to GET money, not spend it. I mean, honestly, it seems to me that we are spending everything we have so Iraqi's can have HDTV flat screen's, Apple computers, and I-Pods... (yes im exagerating, felt like saying something from SNL...)

Again, all I know about are what Bush is spending money on and not about what we are doing to get it back. The people and the Gov't funds.

Eliminating war is never gonna happen. War's of all different types happen all the time. People disagree, thats what leads to war. SO unless you would like to brainwash the world to be a conformity then its not happening..

[Zygote]

I mean, honestly, it seems to me that we are spending everything we have so Iraqi's can have HDTV flat screen's, Apple computers, and I-Pods...

More like food and medicine...

[Bluestrike_2]

ugh, should have explained it better

Scientists Look to Moonbeams for Earth Energy
.Another Moon-Based Power Link (EDIT-ADDED AFTER ORIGINAL POST)

------------------------------------
WASHINGTON -- A solution to world energy woes and rising gasoline prices might require looking off Earth at our nearest celestial neighbor -- the moon.

Power-beaming satellites have been advocated for numbers of years as a way for energy-hungry Earthlings to develop new sources of power to meet needs in the 21st century.

At the moon, Earth already has a heavenly equivalent to a wall plug, says David Criswell, director of the Institute for Space Systems Operations at the University of Houston in Texas.

"There's no need to build the moon," Criswell told SPACE.com. By mid 21st century, enough lunar solar power can be imported Earthward to supply the world's population of 10 billion people to meet all basic human needs, he said.

[inset]

Solar farms

For the last two decades, Criswell has been on a lunar crusade of sorts. Starting in the 1970s, he and engineering colleague, Robert Waldron, promoted the idea of turning lunar soils and rocks into useful products.

Thanks to the Apollo program, moonwalking astronauts were the first prospectors of another world. Hundreds of pounds of lunar samples have been studied, showing great potential for manufacturing.


There are no "magic" resources or technologies needed, Criswell said. Any handful of lunar dust and rocks will do. That lunar material contains quantities of silicon oxygen and metals, such as iron and aluminum, he said.

Lunar dust can be used directly as thermal, electrical and radiation shields. Also, the dust can be converted into glass, fiberglass and ceramics, not to mention solar cells, electric wiring, microcircuitry and other items.

"Solar-cell technology here on Earth is done in vacuum or near-vacuum conditions. And those conditions are certainly available on the moon, at almost no cost," Criswell said.

On-the-spot beaming

Criswell envisions that large fields of made-on-the-moon solar cells can energize sets of microwave transmitters. These transmitters would be in synch to deliver microwave power to receivers on Earth.

In order to provide inexpensive electric energy to Earth, most of the lunar-situated hardware must be manufactured on the spot, Criswell said. Some high-technology items would be ferried to the moon from Earth, he said.

Pairs of solar farms would be planted in the lunar highlands, on the east and west limbs of the moon, near the equator.

As part of the Lunar Solar Power System, beams of microwaves from the moon are directed to receiving antennas on Earth called "rectennas". They operate when they are in view of the moon. Simple reflectors or active re-transmitters in Earth orbit can redirect energy beams to ground rectennas at times when they are not in sight of the moon.

Solar sails circling the moon would be required to reflect sunlight down to the lunar sites, especially when the moon is in eclipse of Earth, and when the site is no longer in sunlight.

"The more sunlight that can be directed to the site, then the more energy output for Earth," Criswell said.

Not only Earth could benefit from moon beaming.

In full operation, re-targeted lunar-based transmitters could supply power out past Jupiter, Criswell said.

Step-by-step plans

How soon can a Lunar Solar Power System plan be started?

"This is like having a baby. You can have it in 100 years or 10 years," Criswell said. "It can be done in 10-year increments," he said.

A first step would be 10 years of planning -- sketching out business plans and carrying out hardware demonstrations here on Earth. Building up the technical community to run such a lunar power base is key, Criswell said.

~

To demonstrate the idea's practicality, sets of lunar-landing robots can be dispatched to the moon. Once there, they would unfurl solar arrays, then operate in tandem to transmit a collective low-energy beam back to Earth.

"This type of activity could be started very quickly," Criswell said. Follow-on stages would mean sending equipment to the moon, showing how products can be made of lunar soil and rock.

Eventually, the moon would be dotted with factories, robot tractors and repair shops -- all part of building up the Lunar Solar Power System, Criswell said.

Given the closeness of the moon, one-way radio signals from Earth take only 1.3 seconds to cross space. On-duty robots, controlled from Earth could do the building, operation and maintenance of lunar power-beaming sites, Criswell said. "You will need some people, but how many, I'm not sure at this point," he said.

The price tag for bringing the moon on line, and churning out power for Earth is about $150 billion, roughly twice the cost of the Apollo program in today's dollars, Criswell said. Capable of churning out more and more power over the years, by 2015, 1,000 gigawatts of power could be pumped to Earth from the moon, he said.

"Everybody's grandchildren right now would be energy prosperous by 2050," he said. "If you don't have access to cheap energy, that's one of the things like not having enough air."

Weaning the Earth off our current carbon-based energy system is a must, Criswell said. "Otherwise we're going to stay in a precarious situation. If you want a prosperous world, there just are no other options," he added.

Robots need supervision

Not everyone is ready to hook up to Criswell's lunar power supply, however.

"My own feeling is that he may well be right, but the idea is downstream," said Bryan Erb, president of the Sunsat Energy Council, based in Houston, Texas. The group backs a first-things-first approach, namely the building of satellite power stations in Earth orbit.

"It takes a big investment to get back to the moon," Erb said. "I just don't see a graceful migration path to get to a lunar power system without a massive up-front investment," he said.

Erb said he views the Criswell proposal as a "vast undertaking" that would be very costly. "If you could overcome that hurdle, then there's a lot of promise in his idea of using the moon," he said.

Taking a wait-and-see attitude is Paul Werbos, program director for control networks and computational intelligence at the National Science Foundation. He recently co-sponsored with NASA a workshop that looked over the Criswell plan, among other space-research issues.

"We don't have a definite verdict, but I am much more optimistic than before," Werbos said. "The opportunity is so great, we should not lose the opportunity."

Werbos said that a critical aspect of Criswell's idea is use of tele-autonomy, that is, how to coordinate human beings on Earth with on-the-job robots stationed on the moon.

"That's the key concept in my mind in order to build any kind of large-scale space power system -- on the Earth or on the moon," he said. "How do you get robots smart enough to do their job under a kind of loose supervision arrangement?"
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The whole WAR statement:

Think of it this way:
what would you rather do? Fight here on earth or spend a bit of money to help get some space colonies out there?

If after colonies were set up, and the crazy dictator did not like the whole peace thing, they can go kill stuff up there. Ok, not really. But you get the point.

Granted, with ignorance out on this planet, it would be a HUGE road to travel. But do you think that every nation would be working together in only ten or fifteen? True colonies on Mars and such could be a good century off. AT LEAST 50 years. Great strides in peace could be made during that time frame. We really do not have any idea what the future may bring. Who knows what technologies could be made that could allow us to manufacture things less expensively, and the ability to create much more powerful space engines.

Another alternative energy source is ANTIMATTER. CERN(guys who invented the World Wide Web, Not Department of Defense)over in Switzerland has been experimenting with the practical uses of antimatter for a few years now. There is plenty of info on the web about antimatter

[MiniMag84]

wow, yeah, that does sound pretty cool. But I still don't think we're in the kind of financial shape to be make solar panels, etc... on the moon.

[Bluestrike_2]

You're Right!!!

We're Not! and we won't be for a few more years, but we're not talking about tommorrow. We're talking about 2015+. with the war in iraq, we are putting a LOT of money out. But hey, those guys and gals over there deserve to be treated like HUMANS, not like Saddam's little toys, so it is partially justified in my mind, I just wish that the other nations would help instead of saying "Them darn american scum, they think they police of world."

[Lohman446]

Lets look at it this way - American manufacturing the same thing day in and day out is gone - we simply cannot compete with long term products (products that will not be changed in the next six months) against some of the other countries ou there.

Going to Mars will require technology, inventions we do not have yet. America's capitalistic society has always done well rewarding those that woudl take risks to create something new, think of the new things that will need to be created to do this. This is where American industry can excel. I think this is a great goal for the country, and fail or succeed, we will ultimately succeed eventually, it will be good for America.

[Chojin Man]

This is a little off topic, but when all of the genocide was going on in Bosnia why didn't we overthrow governments over there too, like we did in Iraq?

I'm with Rather on this one. Where the heck is all of the money going to come from? 2015 is not really that far away. It seems that we will still be paying for the Iraq bill in 2015.

I agree that the benifits could be tremendious, but without international support/funding the cost to the U.S. would be atrocious, and not worth it IMO.

Is there any plan or budgeting that shows if other countires are going to chip in some money too?

I dunno about it stopping wars either. When we invented the plane/airtravel did it stop war? When we invented cars, the wheel, the space program, did it stop war? No. All it did (as far as war is concerned) was give us some new toys to kill eachother with. I really don't see this as any different. We will probably just end up inventing some new energy source that will allow us to kill each other with even greater ease.