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Edan
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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...r_wh/bush_space
quote:
Bush to Announce Missions to Mars, Moon
41 minutes ago Add White House - AP to My Yahoo!
By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) will announce plans next week to send Americans to Mars and establish a permanent human presence on the moon, senior administration officials said Thursday night.
AP Photo
Bush won't propose sending Americans to Mars anytime soon; rather, he envisions preparing for the mission more than a decade from now, one official said.
In addition to proposing the first trip to the moon since December 1972, the president wants to build a permanent space station there.
Three senior officials said Bush wants to aggressively reinvigorate the space program, which has been demoralized by a series of setbacks, including the space shuttle disaster last February that killed seven astronauts.
The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Bush's announcement would come in the middle of next week.
Bush has been expected to propose a bold new space mission in an effort to rally Americans around a unifying theme as he campaigns for re-election.
Many insiders had speculated he might set forth goals at the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers' famed flight last month in North Carolina. Instead, he said only that America would continue to lead the world in aviation.
Earlier, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with Bush in Florida that the president would make an announcement about space next week, but he declined to give details.
It's possible Bush could make the announcement in his State of the Union address later this month, painfully close to the anniversaries of both the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.
It was the Columbia tragedy that helped force a discussion of where NASA (news - web sites) should venture beyond the space shuttle and international space station. The panel that investigated the Columbia accident called for a clearly defined long-term mission — a national vision for space that has gone missing for three decades.
House Science Committee spokeswoman Heidi Tringe said lawmakers on the panel "haven't been briefed on the specifics" of the plan but expected an announcement.
Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, a member of the House Science Committee, said he welcomed the move because he has tried to get the president more interested in space exploration.
"I had the feeling the last 2 1/2 years people would rather make a trip to the grocery store than a trip to the moon because of the economy," Hall said. "As things are turning around, we need to stay in touch with space" and the science spinoffs it provides.
On Saturday, NASA landed a six-wheeled robot on Mars to study the planet. However, the Spirit rover is stuck because the air bags that cushioned its landing are obstructing its movement. A second rover named Opportunity was sent in its wake and should land on Jan. 24.
Asked Wednesday whether the success of the Mars rovers could lead to a human mission to Mars, NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said, "The rovers are a precursor mission — kind of an advance team — to figuring out what the conditions are on the planet, and once we figure out how to deal with the human effects, we can then send humans to explore in real time."
While answering questions on the White House Web site, O'Keefe said interplanetary exploration depends on "what we learn and whether we can develop the power and ... propulsion capabilities necessary to get there faster and stay longer and potentially support humans in doing so."
On the 20th anniversary of the first manned moon landing in 1989, his father, then-President Bush, called for lunar colonies and a Mars expedition: "I'm not proposing a 10-year plan like Apollo; I'm proposing a long-range, continuing commitment. ... For the new century: Back to the moon; back to the future. And this time, back to stay. And then a journey into tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars."
The prohibitively expensive plan went nowhere.
No one, least of all members of Congress, knows how NASA would pay for lunar camps or Mars expeditions. When the first President Bush proposed such a project, the estimated price tag was $400 billion to $500 billion.
The moon is just three days away while Mars is at least six months away, and the lunar surface therefore could be a safe place to shake out Martian equipment. Observatories also could be built on the moon, and mining camps could be set up to gather helium-3 for conversion into fuel for use back on Earth.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, among others, has called for an expansion of the U.S. space program, including a return to the moon. The United States put 12 men on the moon between July 1969 and December 1972.
An interagency task force led by Vice President **** Cheney (news - web sites) has been considering options for a space mission since summer.
Former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, has said that before deciding to race off to the moon or Mars, the nation needs to complete the international space station and provide the taxi service to accommodate a full crew of six or seven. The station currently houses two.
At the same time, Glenn has said, NASA could be laying out a long-term plan, setting a loose timetable and investing in the engineering challenges of sending people to Mars. The only sensible reason for going to the moon first, he says, would be to test the technology for a Mars trip. |
I'm more psyched by the permanent presence on the moon, but both are cool. 
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darkgrendel
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Bite me! ..it's fun.
May 1999
time: 23:33
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Holy crap. As generally neat as those things would be, personally I'd rather have my $1500. But that's just me.
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darkgrendel
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Bite me! ..it's fun.
May 1999
time: 23:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Big Crunch
A permanent present on the Moon would be a complete waste of time. The only possible reason is to stick two fingers up at China by defintely having Americans at the location of China's first manned lunar landing. Additionaly the US mannned mission to Mars would be a willy wangling competition designed to coincide with China landing its first man on the Moon. |
Oh, come on, it'd be cool, and you know how the US is about cool things.
Plus, if anyone ever gets to thinking about colonizing the moon properly, we'll have first dibs.
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Mordoch
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Denver, Colorado
Jan 2002
time: 05:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Big Crunch
A permanent present on the Moon would be a complete waste of time. The only possible reason is to stick two fingers up at China by defintely having Americans at the location of China's first manned lunar landing. Additionaly the US mannned mission to Mars would be a willy wangling competition designed to coincide with China landing its first man on the Moon. |
I'm going to firmly diagree here. A basic issue with simply sticking things in orbit is that they are still experiencing a minimal amount of atmospheric friction from our atmosphere and over time slow down and fall out of orbit without further intervention. This means they need a substancial amount of fuel to act as boosters for satelites, or they need period boosts from rockets, i.e. the ISS. Any equipment we place as part of a base on the moon would be permenent. We could stick an elaborate telescope on the far side of the moon, which would give us great pictures, but we wouldn't have to worry about it burning up with time.
A key advantage would be great testing for a potential future base on mars. Many of the issues involved would be similar, but if a self contained system starts to fail on the moon, we can send a resupply trip up their fairly quickly (assuming we develope such a capability again), while it would take far longer for an expedition to reach Mars. I suspect that a strategy of drilling and digging into the moon and then sealing and reinforcing the dug out areas would be easier for expansion than assembling things in orbit. It might be more effort to transport things to the moon, but there are benefits to doing so once you get there.
Finally the moon could potentially be a way station for longer journeys, i.e. to Mars. Fuel can be transported to the moon base, and then craft that expended alot of fuel escaping Earth's gravity could refuel at the moon. Since the moon's gravity is much less than the moon's far less energy would be expanded escaping.
A base on the moon certainly doesn't do everything but it does have some useful utility.
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Edan
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I prefer permanent presence on the moon more than a trip to Mars for a couple of reasons.
Mars is pretty much a PR move - not a bad thing in itself - giving people a vision to reach for, making science and astronomy "cool", etc, are all great things.
But after we go to Mars, pack up and go home, we could easily go through what happened after the moon missions - we spend 30 years keeping NASA on a bare bones budget. With a permanent presence on the moon, it's not that easy to turn our backs on space again.
Plus, a permanent presence on the moon will mean scientific and commercial opportunities. While there are the same for a Mars missions, I'm not convinced that it will be anywhere as much return for the money that a moonbase would be.
But, again, both are cool.
Last edited by Edan on 09-01-2004 at 09:34
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mrmitchell
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Mazarin, the only thing that ever mattered.
BRAGGING RIGHTS
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Dauphin
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Caught in a tuna net
Jan 1970
time: 05:33
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quote:
Originally posted by Mordoch
I'm going to firmly diagree here. A basic issue with simply sticking things in orbit is that they are still experiencing a minimal amount of atmospheric friction from our atmosphere and over time slow down and fall out of orbit without further intervention. This means they need a substancial amount of fuel to act as boosters for satelites, or they need period boosts from rockets, i.e. the ISS. Any equipment we place as part of a base on the moon would be permenent. We could stick an elaborate telescope on the far side of the moon, which would give us great pictures, but we wouldn't have to worry about it burning up with time.
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Less than 2% of all manned mission space costs are fuel costs, of which nearly all is consumed during launch. Saving on fuel is not an issue.
quote:
A key advantage would be great testing for a potential future base on mars. Many of the issues involved would be similar, but if a self contained system starts to fail on the moon, we can send a resupply trip up their fairly quickly (assuming we develope such a capability again), while it would take far longer for an expedition to reach Mars. I suspect that a strategy of drilling and digging into the moon and then sealing and reinforcing the dug out areas would be easier for expansion than assembling things in orbit. It might be more effort to transport things to the moon, but there are benefits to doing so once you get there. |
I still think the capital outlay at the present time is not worth the potential rewards when compared to other potential space endeavours.
quote:
Finally the moon could potentially be a way station for longer journeys, i.e. to Mars. Fuel can be transported to the moon base, and then craft that expended alot of fuel escaping Earth's gravity could refuel at the moon. Since the moon's gravity is much less than the moon's {Earth's?} far less energy would be expanded escaping. |
If you plan on sending fuel from Earth to the Moon, the fuel ships will have to escape the Earth's gravity anyway. You are not making any net savings by sending up the fuel seperately.
quote:
A base on the moon certainly doesn't do everything but it does have some useful utility. |
I can see advantageous uses, but I don't see it as the best option.
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09-01-2004 08:49
And I'm sure our geezers have heard ramblings about it since their birth 
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