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#14
July 2nd 04, 12:32 AM
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In article , Mike Coslo writes:
N2EY wrote: (Steve Robeson K4CAP) wrote in message ... Subject: BPL - UPLC -Repeat the lie three times and claim it for truth From: PAMNO (N2EY) Date: 6/21/2004 6:23 PM Central Standard Time Message-id: In article , (Steve Robeson K4CAP) writes: In the 50's and 60's we didn't have the technology. (to send people to the moon) We barely had the technology to get to the moon in the 70s. Had it by 1969, to be exact. The Soviets sent unmanned probes there about a decade earlier. History has shown us that most major "jumps" in technology and society happen in the wake of war. Some jumps, yes, but I don't know about "most". In many cases those "jumps" would have happened anyway, or are the result of massive investment by governments that would be considered "socialistic" in peacetime. Or they're the result of government programs that are done to soften the conversion to a peacetime economy. In any event the cost far exceeds the benefits. RECENT history has shown that we made some pretty significant strides based on the Apollo program alone. Such as? Tang and Teflon existed before NASA. Ahh, but can you say the same for Tang flavored Teflon? There was anembarrassing moment when a '60s era astronaut swore he'd never drink the stuff ever again because of its GI tract effects on him. Trouble was he forgot he was on VOX... No one has been back to the moon in 32 years and there are no serious plans to do so anytime soon. The technology to do it would almost have to be reinvented. Couldn't build more Saturns, as the tooling is gone, as well as the supply path. So we'd have to rebuild the tooling and supply systems in order to build the rockets. Which could take longer than it did the first time. I wouldn't say reinvented, but it would need to be re-done. I suspect that a new moon mission would be much much different. I would guess in-orbit assembly for the propulsion system, possibly the ship. That was considered for Apollo, but it turns out the total rocket power needed is greater than sending an all-in-one mission. As enormous as Saturn Vs were, they were just adequate for the job. That's a good thing. For those who insist that "we need to spend the money here", I ask WHERE in space are you going to spend that money? We need to spend the money in ways that will directly benefit people here. And address problems long-term. Well, that leaves the field wide open. Some would have us believe that we would be better to spend the money feeding the world's poor. Of course, then you end up with a lot of fat poor people that will continue eating your food until you run out, then you can starve along with 'em! 8^) Or the money could be spent teaching the world's poor how not to be poor. The old "give a man a fish" thing. A bit of government subsidising would promote yet another wave of technical advencement. Agreed - spent in the right places. That's the principle that drives those "Tax and Spend Democrats!!!" As opposed to the "Don't tax but spend like a drunken sailor" other types? Yep. Trips to the Moon and Mars will require a lot more than "a bit of government spending". It was in the Nixon/Ford years that the big NASA cutbacks took place. Too much money, they said. There was supposed to be an Apollo 18 lunar mission - it was cut and the Saturn V for it became a museum piece. Literally. We found out we could make more money selling our hats to each other.... for a little while anyhoo. Meanwhile the hats were made elsewhere. And it wll worked up until people stopped wearing hats because nobody could afford them anymore. All of NASA's manned budget went into the shuttle, which is a marvelous system with a 1 in 75 chance of complete mission failure. The number of shuttles lost compared to the number of missions flown verifies the reliability analysis. The reason the USA made the big space commitments was because JFK and LBJ (guess what party) pushed for them. They were essentially done to compete with the Soviets for the "high ground" of space. Recall that practically all of the important early space firsts (first earth satellite, first animal in space, first human in space and in orbit, first woman in space, first mission to another heavenly body, first pictures of the far side of the Moon...) were done by the Soviet Union. And most of their early accomplishments were complete surprises in the West. The USA played catch-up for years. JFK and LBJ knew that if the Rooskies could orbit a man and bring him back safely, doing the same with a nuclear weapon would be a piece of cake for them. I know I'm in my post field day weird move, but I wonder which country posted the first bowel movement in space? Do you know about Alan Shepard's Mercury flight? Today there is no such need or competition. Just wait 5 years. More like 20 The cost was staggering but they had the political clout to do it. They could sell it to everyone on the national security agenda. And it didn't hurt that a lot of the money was spent in states like LBJ's own Texas. (Why is the control center for manned flights in Houston when the launch facility is in Florida?) Billions were spent on the space program in the '60s but when Americans needed quality fuel-efficient cars in the '70s they had to go to Germany and Japan for them. I think the recent events in the Mojave also show that a bit of entrepenurial spirit and investment can go a long way. As exciting as that effort is, all of it was done more than 35 years ago with the X-15. But that X-15 took a monumental effort and support structure. Not nearly so much as even the Mercury program. hat is the take away I get from the SpaceShipOne effort. By comparison, the Rutan effort is almost easy. I would not say "easy". And the SS1 effort has decades of experience and data behind it. X-15 did not. Did you see the pix of the technicians working on the plane? Jeans, T-Shirts and sneakers, and done in a workshop, not a humongous facility with cleanrooms and scary nasty chemicals sitting around. then they push it out of the "garage" hook it up to the White Knight and off they go. It's a bit more complicated than that... But if you read about the X-1, there are a lot of parallels. Despite the goal, I don't see the real lesson as getting to space, but the way they are doing it. So if they can do it for less money, and private money at that, why should we spend billions of tax dollars on it? And it was done without government funding. So why do we need NASA for manned flights at all? Let the private folks do it on a self-funded basis. So why not Mars? Because the cost and risk is simply too much for the benefits. Do you have any idea what a mission to Mars would require in terms of how big and complex the ship(s) would have to be, how long they'd be gone, and how completely on their own they would be? Mars is orders of magnitude more difficult than the moon. Apollo missions were no more than two weeks, Mars missions would be over a year long. The Martian surface is in some ways more hostile than the lunar surface and the landing physics much more difficult (Martian gravity is stronger). Look how many unmanned Mars missions have failed completely. Heck, figure out radio propagation delay to Mars.... What benefits would a manned mission to Mars give that could not be had any other way? Ahh, now we are getting close to what I think you are trying to say. As much as I enjoy the martian rovers, and as excited as I get about their discoveries, and in general, all the wonderful things that we get from the unmanned side of space exploration, if the basic purpose isn't to put people somewhere - I don't support it. Why not? The machines can do things humans cannot. The cost is less. The machines can stay for a long time and don;t have to come back. AND, as we see from Hubble, they aren't taking care of the toys we are giving them now. Because the money isn't there. The Hubble deserves to live out it's full lifetime. At the end of it's useful life, it should be visited by a shuttle, packed up, and returned to earth to take an honored place in the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. Getting to see THAT would give me goosebumps and get me all excited. And what's more, it helps cement my support for all of this. The people at NASA should be concerned that ubergeeks like me don't support them at this time. It could also serve as a testbed for the effects of space on the hardware - all of it. How many meteorite holes, how much radiation damage, etc? Simulation is fine but imagine being able to study, in detail, something that spent years in space. Once upon a time, we built the thing. It was important enough to take the risks and send it into space. Even though it was known that the optics were defective. It got there - it had problems. We considered it important enough to go back into space and repair it. That was a technological triumph by the way. It turned that ugly duckling into a a beautiful swan of optical imaging. They *knew* the lense wasn't right. Why it was launched is a classic case of "not my job". That lesson is a valuable one. We felt it was important enough to send servicing missions to. Now "we" don't any more. At one time, we were going to retrieve it, but now it is too "dangerous" to even do a maintenance run on it. Answer: Robots. My how we have changed. We aren't inspired. We demand that our explorers have the same safety factor as our automobiles. We are now pussies. I disagree. Yiur care is many orders of magnitude safer. More important, most car accidents are caused or exacerbated by human error. People not wearing seat belts, driving too fast, driving while impaired, etc. By comparison, the shuttle failures were caused by equipment troubles that the crew could do nothing about. If they told me that a servicing or retrieval mission to the shuttle wouldn't take place unless I was on board, I'd be on my way down there right now. Me too but that's not going to happen. And how much all of it would cost? I think there is a psychological and social cost to *not* do it. Such as? Is it worse than becoming more and more dependent on imports? Why not research stations on the Moon? How much are *you* willing to pay for them in tax dollars? That's really the bottom line. People are all for space exploration and such until the bills for it show up. Unless you want to ressurect the "world is flat" or the "we never went to the Moon" conspiracies, what other legit reasons can you think of to NOT do it? Simple: The costs outweigh the benefits. There are easier, cheaper, faster ways to get the benefits and solve the problems we have on earth. Actually, I don't think there is a way to solve those problems. The ones on earth? I disagree! I'm old enough to remember when the phrase "reaching for the moon" meant someone was trying to do that which could not be done. Yet it was done. There was a time when it was seriously argued that some men had to be enslaved, either literally or economically, because nobody would voluntarily do those jobs. That problem was solved There was a time when it was seriously argued that women could not be allowed to vote because it would cause all kinds of problems. Turned out not to bve a problem. There was a time when it was considered impossible to teach most children to read and write because their work was 'needed' in the farms, mills and factories. Space and war may help with some things but they are horribly inefficient means of progress. None of this means we shouldn't go into space, just that we need to do so in a way that is balanced with other needs and programs. Ahh, but whose balance, Jim? Mine. ;-) I think that humankind badly NEEDS the sense of exploration and adventure and the frontier effect of space. My price tag of balance is a lot higher than yours, which is in turn a lot higher than a lot of other people's Of course. But when space exploration is used as a way of distracting people from solvable earth problems, that's not a good thing. If we're not their, and it isn't humans there, maybe it's just time to sit down and watch the history channel. We might see a story about us there some day. What's all the rush? Space has been there for a lot longer than we have, and will be there long after we are gone. We can take our time and do it in a planned way, or rush headlong and wastefully, and accomplish little. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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