The President's new plans on going back to the moon...
 

What are your thoughts about this? I particuarly think it's a great idea. The space program needs to be rejuvinated, because right now the morale of the people of the United States is pretty low, and new endeavors into space will definitely raise the publics general well-being.

oops, I forgot the link to the story:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...d=544&ncid=716

I think its a great idea. It will develop a lot of new technology that will be applicable in every day use on Earth too.

I like the idea, but I get the idea that party lines will have the democrats voting against this, and that the more conservative republicans will shy away from the price tag...

sounds like a decent idea though, far from original, but definitely a good goal.

I think this money would be much better spent on domestic things. I don't think the US spends enough money worrying about the upkeep of itself.

really, Bush has wasted enough money on the most useless stuff evar, while America's economy and debt just plummet and rise (respectively)

Yay, lets waste even more money.

Lets send a dude to Mars, we've been to the moon.

We need a better testing ground than the North Pole and the desert.

*biff!* *bam!* *boom!* "To the Moon, Alice!"

I'd really like to see it done by a ground more appropriate than the NASA "white collar Welfare" organization. Let's use either some new group or a bunch of private ones that actually know how to bend metal and get shit done w/o spending forever and aMAZing amounts of money on "studies".

you mean go to the moon for the first time?.....yea, I'd like to see that.
(yes, I'm one of THOSE people)





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I don't really see the point. We are already spending ourselves into a ridiculous deficit, and now we're going to pour money into going to the moon....why? To boost the flagging American ego? :rolleyes: Maybe at another time when we're not already spread a bit thin, but now does not seem like the time.

I have a couple huge problems with his plans. First, acording to CNN, he wants to go to go to the moon by 2018. If it is so importiant that we go there... why not go next year? This just seems like a nice way to get some press before the next election. I mean, he would be out of office before this moon plan ever came off.
My other problem is, if I remember correctly, he was going to cut funding on the International Space station. Now he wants to go to the moon, can't this guy EVER play nice with other countries?

I would actually like it if we had a cool space program again, but I don't think Bush really gives a fuck, I think he just wants news airtime that isn't about the war in Iraq.

Bingo.

Get used to it - and buy some higher boots - it's about to get even deeper.

There's oil on the moon?

Seriously although another moon landing is all well and good (and great PR), money is better spent at the orbital level. The shuttles are woefully out of date (and completely ill- suited for moon operation) and are responsibly for all satellite repair, a decent amount of launchs and a whole lot of scientific reasearch. Revamping those and making the primary goal and functional (and useful) space station would be money better spent long term.

But nowhere near as flashy and 2004 is an election year after all....

I can't wait for Spring Break on the Moon 2018! I think its a great idea. The technology spin-offs from the space program have given us immeasurable benefits.

I like the idea of it, and always held the belief that if we wanna get anywhere in outer space, start from the moon where we don't need to really worry about aerodynamics and quite as much gravity. But I highly doubt he'll do it or say he will, but quitely cut it if he gets a second term.

Because we don't have any functional craft that are capable of making the voyage and returning safely.

I'm all for revitalizing the space program. It creates jobs, brings international prestige, and advances scientific and technological development.

The Moon in 15 Years? Hell yes!

I'd like to think that the trip to the moon will be used to develop the kinds of technologies that will be needed to make a round-trip manned landing on the Red Planet somtime in the 20's. If something goes wrong during the developmental stages, Luna is a whole helluva lot closer for a rescue mission.

We're 20 years behind in developing new manned spaceflight technologies. Nothing new has been flown since the Shuttle Endeavour in 1992 -- eleven years ago. The Lag from the end of the Apollo missions and the beginning of Space Shuttle Missions was nine years, but the first shuttles were being constructed by 1975, only three years after the last moon mission. We do have a design competition going on for a new vehicle to replace the shuttles as our primary ground-to-orbit reusable heavy lifter, but nothing designed for interplanetary travel. We have to begin this project from scratch, so a 15-year window is not unreasonable, especially considering all the political bullshit that is going to slow the process right from the beginning.

And now, a bit of preachiness:

Human nature drives us, as a species, to move ahead to places we've never seen and experience them firsthand. To Pioneer, to be the first person ever to do or see a thing, drives many of us. Frankly, there's not much left to explore on this little blue marble, so we cast our eyes skyward. The recent furor about Spirit and Opportunity is evidence enough of this, and these are robotic golf-carts with cameras. To send human beings to another world and allow them to explore first hand the wonders of the cosmos will ignite a national pride not seen in this country for more than 30 years.

I've already had a conversation with my wife about this, and if none of the democratic candidates supports this initiative I will be casting my vote for President Bush in November. I have always felt very strongly that the exploration and colonization of space should be a high priority for this nation, and for far too long NASA has been neglected in the budget and then ridiculed for not being able to perform the same kind of dramatic missions they had in the heyday from the mid-60's to the early days of the shuttle flights.

Quite Right. The moon will inevitably become the harbor from which the future space fleets of Earth are constructed and launched.

For some reason, I'm with cnor on this one. I do, however, think that this is a great idea. Spending more money? So? Are we ever even going to starting paying off the debt? Doubt it. "The National Debt" just seems like another farce to me anyway. We owe most of that money to ourselves anyway, but let's not dicuss that. And so what if we do borrow another trillion dollars from ourselves?

On a side note, even though as a rule of thumb I automatically disagree with anything that comes out of Bush's mouth, I am going to have to say that we need this "rejuvenation" of the space program. I'm pretty sure that Mars can't be colonized (at least not by humans) and that it is going to take us $1 trillion to find this out the really really hard way, but I would compare that to a kid trying to learn how to ride a bike. In my case, the cost of learning to ride a bike when I was a kid was several cuts and bruises and endless frustration. But you learn, eventually, no matter how hard it is. I can only see this as a step forward, not backward, even though the price will be pretty darn high.

We need less government and spending, not more.... geeeezzz

Do any of you know the real meaning of conservative????

Republicans apparently don't. At least the Dems never said that they were conservative......

Ever heard of a little process called "Terra Forming"?

See, we send up to Mars a capsule of photosynthetic microscopic algae, or lichen, or something else capable of processing carbon dioxide into Oxygen at very cold temperatures and with less sunlight than earth usually gets. Just like every other plant it lives off the minerals and nitrogen in the soil and the CO2 in the air and before you know it (couple of hundred years to couple of thousand years) you have an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere and evolving carbon-based plant life that becomes a staple of the food supply for newly arriving colonists.

Of course, that's the short form, but it is theoretically sound.

Then there's Europa, one of the Moons of Jupiter -- which we probably won't get a person to until some time in the 2nd half of this century. It's earth-sized, and has abundant liquid water benath a crust of ice on the surface. We've already seen here on Earth that life forms can develop underwater while being fed by volcanic mineral vents. There's life there waiting for us to find it. I only hope I live long enough to see it.

This is our future. I don't mind the price tag. Its money spent on our species, not just our country. Its refreshing. Sure its political promises too, but I don't care who is pushing us to Mars, I just care that we get there. Now if we can just work on that flying car and pill-form meals...

::looking for personal robot::

They can skip the pills-for-meals, but my flying car is 4 years overdue. . .

We're doing a good enough job fucking up one planet. The last thing the universe needs is us branching out.

No, you have to see the big picture. Planetary Redundancy. We terraform Mars, deplete its resources, re-terraform Earth, deplete its resource, etc. etc. Rinse. Deplete. Repeat.

thank you Wu Lung for the oil comment :D

Stiltzkin - the colony was planned for the moon, not mars, so its closer for getting resources to the moon, but yet, its almost equally uneconomical.

If we plan on reaching out geek wet dreams though, we need this kind of space exploration in order to develop new technologies, especially in propulsion.

This trillion dollars would be well spent on developing a warp drive :p

All our eggs are in one basket.

We need to get back out into space ASAP.

I am all in favor of Dubya going back to the moon.

Oh, you mean setting up a colony on the moon. Here's the deal; this week he made a play for the Latin Vote, now he's playing for the forward looking vote. I wouldn't be able to tell if this were a good idea or not until he had been behind it for a couple more years, and I sincerely hope he won't have that opportunity.

I'd like to see more space exploration, but the majority is right in saying we don't need to spend more money on NASA.

The entire space program needs to be revitalized and reformed. I'm tired of endless trips to the upper atmosphere and to the ISS, which is as big a joke as the space folks can muster right now.

Get some guts, go for the glory, and make going to space fun again instead of this mind-numbing shuttle jaunt we've been stuck with for about 20 years.

The hell of it is that 1) A Democratic president is unlikely to be able to do the degree of private partnership and outright privitization that is going to be necessary to get the space program going and excting in this day and age and 2) Being able to throw rocks down the gravity well from the Moon would be a neo-con's dream. It's the ultimate military high ground, and this administration has shown a predeliction to ignore or abrogate treaties that don't suit them. I mean, talk about military power! Free solar to run railguns and aluminum refinement, and all the <strike>dirt you can eat</strike> rocks you can throw.

It's a wonderful idea, but the devil is very much in the details, and I have been consistently disappointed with the planning and follow through from Shrub and his gang of thieves. Still, it's also a public trough they can use to make their buddies richer, so it could happen.

send bush to the moon. money can be saved by making it a one way trip.

It sounds like a good idea to me. It'll give us something as a nation to support.

The Moon belongs to America.

As much as I like the idea of actually doing something with NASA, this is merely an election year publicity stunt.

The only way I can see the Moon being of value is as a launching point for bigger missions to Mars or other solar systems. Someday, this planet and solar system will die. I would hope that generations beyond us will have another place to go. I think I read somewhere long ago that producing certain materials in low gravity or no gravity environments can make them stronger. That would be interesting.

Then again, maybe we should all move to the Moon and Nuke this place. :)

Election. Year. Posturing.

(otherwise known as something else the non-rich's grandchildren will be paying off)

The shuttle needs to be replaced. It's a proof of concept vehicle that's been proving the concept for 20+ years. In short, it was meant as a test bed and some bureaucratic idiots decided the concept vehicle would be fine, totally unchanged. Well 50% of the original fleet has been destroyed. It's time for a new space plane.

I also disagree that our goal should be earth orbit. We're already doing that and not getting much out of it - at least, not from the manned part of it. We need to establish a base on the moon. The space station is cool and everything, but it's basically an orbiting paperweight, and it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to add one tiny piece to it.

Build a base on the moon and things change drastically. We can add a manufacturing module. Then build the rest of the base from there. We can launch deep space probes/ships from the moon. Now we don't have to make them any specific size to fit in a payload bay, and we don't have to expend absurd amounts of fuel just to get off the earth. The moon SHOULD be our goal, and if I really thought Bush felt that way I'd be applauding him. I however agree with the others that say it's a bunch of BS to sound nice before an election.

After all, in 1961, Kennedy said we were going to the moon. This was in a time when we could barely get into orbit - it was after all only 20 days after Alan Shepard became the first American in space. 8 years and 2 months later, we were on the moon, having discovered nearly everything about getting there from the ground up in those 8 years.

So why the hell, since we already know how to get there, would it take 14 years to do it? That's just dumb, and puts the goal far enough away from Bush's presidency that he doesn't have to actually do anything to live up to his word.

Oh my god. I like the lack of any specific reason for spending this amount of money on a permanent base on the moon. The space program should continue to be funded, but this is an insane amount of money. Could you imagine if we spend HALF a a trillion dollars teaching people in Africa & Asia about AIDS prevention and family planning? Or if we put half a trillion dollars into our education system? Oh wait, that stuff isn't COOL.

Silly me.

Revitalization of the space programs are absolutely neccessary in my opinion.

Humanity's future lies in the stars. We're looking at two basic options: expand or drastically cut back on development and the human race, if we limit ourselves to Earth.

Agreed. Or I'll at least vote for an independant candidate who shares the vision.

6 Billion humans and counting. There's only so much space here.