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.

I love space and astronomy. I was born in 1964 and remember all the landings on the moon. It was fasinating tome. I would have to have all the facts before I decide, but I'd like to kow what kind of testing they would do on the moon that could not be done int he space station? Look how many trips it took to build MIR. How many trips will it take to set up a station on the moon?

yes- as i am fond of saying, the world belongs to the bold.....

I like the whole Idea, besides who says that the US Government has to pay for the trip or the base on the moon? Why can't some business fork over part of the money needed to help establish a station on the moon?

Did You know that the hotel industry has commistioned a study on what a Moon Resort would cost to build? And wheather it would make money or not? Business thinks about space and the moon more than people relize. The only thing holding space travel back is the cost per pound to put something into space. Figure out a way to lower the cost and you will have single handedly made space a lot more attractive for business. Once business gets interested it's only a matter of time before space travel will become akin to traveling on a airplane.

So really the only thing that the government has to do is lower the cost of getting into space. After that it becomes a snowball effect.

Just my humble opinion.

Hey, We are already in debt 7 trillion bucks, whats a couple billion to go to the moon gonna hurt?

I suggest using the moon for our landfill overflow.

Development of the space program is a worthy investment in our children's future.

Inspiring our young people to go into careers in science and technology is an investment that is more than worthwhile. Children who watched the moon landing broadcast grew up to lead us into the information age, who knows what today's young people could do if given the proper inspiration.

Plus, the moon could be a valuable testing ground for space construction. no one knows what its like to try and put up a wall or run plumbing in a low grav environment, and also its a launchpad to Mars as others have said. fully manufacturing and building a craft then launching it from the moon to anywhere else would be incredibly cheaper than it is to escape the earth's gravitational field.

I think the way they worded that made "Back" to the moon an afterthought. I guess they need to prove it's possible... now that computer technology has refined a bit to allow a computer to even fit aboard the spacecraft

Computers have been on NASAs' 'spacecraft' for some time now.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Hi...rt1-intro.html

Building a space craft would require THOUSANDS of people and huge amounts of specialized equipment permanantly on the moon. It would be insane to think that could happen in our lifetime without needlessly bankrupting our country. Much more likely would be assembling pre-manufactured parts boosted from earth. Still pointlessly expensive.

The economics of the US are all fucked up. Spending that kind of money on a program that has little or no direct benefits. Sure there are some secondary benefits, technological development and all, but why not just spend money directly on them instead of this moon boondoggle? Doesn't make sense.
All the low gravity science we need to do can be done in earth orbit, which is a whole heck of a lot closer and cheaper. And we already have a base there.

The moon only wins for cool factor, which is why Bush is making media noise about it.

Bout fucking time!! Where's my jet pack!!!!

It would be nice to see happen, but as a few here have said, I think it's just a way for the shrub to dupe people into electing him.

Where human beings and human progress are concerned, the inevitable is always a good idea.

Ohhhh.... thought you meant HE was going

Damn.

The moon has about 1/8th the gravity of the earth (I think). This would make it possible to build a "deep space" ship, which wouldn't be able to land on the earth, it would land on the moon. You would not need all kinds of things, for example, a heat shield.

I would like to see humanity stop bickering with itself and concentrate on progressing our knowledge of the universe and beyond. There is SOO much stuff that we cant even dream of here on earth. Humans need to get a different view on life, and I believe that going into space with a moon base is a step in the right direction. If nothing else the conversation about space will inspire other people to take things into their own hands. Progressing the space program of humanity as a whole.

Besides, WHO said that the govenment has to pay for a moon base? WHO says ANY government has to pay for a moon base? Open space up to the business world, give the business community a reason to go into space and sit back and watch the magic happen.

last time I checked i think this nation was about 5.5 trillion dollars in debt. when we elected Bush he said he was goind to start paying that down. Just don't see how we can have all this expensive space flight stuff, a war against Iraq and pay down the debt at the same time.

Maybe we could actually try to fix our mess here first? The moon is most likely always gonna be there. As a species we dont' deserve to leave our planet. By being earthbound we keep our mess on our own planet. If there were a galactic council of aliens they would most likely agree. I like how it would take 13 years to get back up there but it was done in 69 already, 35 years ago. Shit , Computers were in short supply then. Why can't we take a few trillion and throw a new shuttle together in a couple of year with our advances? Maybe we really didn't go to the moon. I'll believe it when I see it. Till then it's just another waste of money while there are people starviing in our streets. If space is our children's future, when are we gonna teach them responsibility for our actions as a species?

I think its a great idea, it is the future, and the sooner the better i say! Its a worthy cause, and i support it 110%!

This would be the first good thing that man has done.

NASA has been seen as a bottomless pit of billions of dollars spent for nothing, but a lot of their research over the decades has paid off in terms of technological advancement. While this will be expensive as hell, so is the rebuilding of Iraq (oh, wow, what a great move that war was), and besides considering how well on our way we are to fucking this planet up it is about time we start looking for ways to move our race to other planets. We could turn the Moon into a landfill next. Outta our way Martians, make way for the garbage man.

Hell yeah we are already running out of space here.

Seriously though we have a responsibility as the leading countries of the planet currently to try and push the technology envelope. The money spent will be relatively small compared to the budget as a whole yet there is a promise of tremendous rewards for society as a whole.

i like this idea:D

Fuck the moon.

It's been done. All they'd have to do is dust off Von Braum's old drawing for the Saturn V and Bob's your uncle.

How bout a president with balls who actually makes a comittment to the idea and puts his money where his mouth is. I seem to recall W's father making a similar pitch, but it was all talk no action.

I say, let's go for Mars NOW. Well, say let's aim for Mars by the end of this decade. Now that's ambitious and that's a real goal.

The moon is just a big rock in space.

Mars is a PLANET.

Or how bout Venus. I hear it's a lot warmer there than mars.

One problem though. Werner Von Braum is dead.

Duh.

>Oil on the Moon

LoL. Guess not. So that is not the reason.

This year is an election one, so this is a standard move for a dork like Bush to try to look like a leader. But the objective is necessarily far out, and besides the geeks no one really cares that much about it.

Bottom line: this is Bush's try at leadership and another pathetic attempt at copying Kennedy's famous speech, like Nixon did when he announced the Shuttle program (which was curtailed later), Reagan with his "Space station Freedom" -- for which all the budget was spent but no hardware was ever built --, Bush 41st and his (rejected) Mars trip and so on.

All politics, no substance *whatsoever*. The last time there was substance in a space program was when Clinton decided, out of post-cold-war politics and economics, to build the space station with the Russians.

Besides that, its all BALONEY.

And yes, it is about time the stuttle gets replaced, but as the replacement will be a cheapo vehicle rather than a more capable one, well, I am not looking forward to that.

About time NASA gets its ass out of low Earth Orbit and moves to one of the Lagrange's points. if they want to go to the moon from there, that suits me fine. but first, a spaceport in lagrange's point and a *finished* long-term space station in low earth orbit

We need to discontinue manned flights entirely. They are a waste of money and provide no new discoveries. Besides the fact that they are dangerous.

What we should do is focus on un-manned exploratory missions. Those along the lines of Rover that can go places we cannot and provide much better data.

Glamorous? No. Scientifically better? Yes.

the idea of spending money on the spaec program is a great idea. Making it a manned project gets more people to understand its difficulty. When NASA talks abou tteh difficulty of sapce people see it as just computers being sent to different place, which means no real connnection. When Humans go themselves more people feel connected to the event, hence more willingness to support its growth. the Space program is also good for developing new advances in almost every form of modern life. So yes, send people to the moon, and many planets after that.