What is Nasa not doing that they...

should be doing?

I think they should be sending up equipment for mining on the moon and other planets. And equipment to other kinds of ships for bringing back what they mined for. There could be oil in another planet we could use to bring the price in oil way down. It could be somewhat dried like sand oil instead of liquidy. Never know. There could be other things of great value in other planets that just have to be mined for. Besides, you wouldnt want to mined our own planet to the point there is no space for ppl to live.

I also think they should set up powerful stationary ground satellites of all kinds on the moon and on other planets and their moons in the solar system so that they form a connecting Solar-System Wide Web with one another to keep signals within the Solar System strong.

They'll need nuclear energy powered ground satellites. They should put nuclear powerplants on the moons and planets to keep everything they set up on them always running on the power from them.

^^Better than wasting money on only looking for life and the things needed for life. And it's better than building a space station where a tolet could ruin it.

[edit on 9-6-2008 by Mabus]

reply to post by Mabus


Even if there were oil on another planet (there almost certainly isn't), there is no conceivable capability for returning the needed quantities safely to Earth, regardless of how much it costs. Ever seen an oil tanker?

And not necessary. Much better to put resources into developing cheap solar energy and energy storage technologies. The amount of energy impinging on the Earth all the time is about 3-4 orders of magnitude greater than our total energy needs. Aloowing forr 30% cloud loss, and only 20% land coverage (wexcluding the use of seaborne barges), The number I get is 10,000 Terawatts. Of course, we need most of that keep our biosphere going, but only a tiny fraction of it meets our entire energy needs.

reply to post by Mabus

I think they should be sending up equipment for mining on the moon and other planets.

If you ask John Lear they have been doing it for decades!

There could be oil in another planet we could use to bring the price in oil way down. It could be somewhat dried like sand oil instead of liquidy

You do realize ,that we already have enough problems refining and extracting oil from the planet we currently live on. Not to mention the cost. If we thought fuel prices were bad now. WOW! Wait till the tax payers have to dish out trillion upon trillions of dollars just to FIND the oil first. Then spend another collosal amount of money and time figuring out a way to safely and economically transfer the raw material back to earth.

I also think they should set up powerful stationary ground satellites of all kinds on the moon and on other planets and their moons in the solar system so that they form a connecting Solar-System Wide Web with one another to keep signals within the Solar System strong.

Why? So the aliens can get free broad band? NO way! I don't think it's fair I have to pay for broad band and the aliens get it for free.

Well i do think that NASA and every other space agency on earth should be making mining priority #1. There's no reason to use Earth based resources for space exploration, and there's no reason why a location with such a high gravity should be used as a jumping point into space a half century later.

I don't see why people should be shot up into space as much as they are at this stage in space exploration. Instead of an ISS for people, we should have a production factory on a metal rich asteroid nearing completion, and we should have a refueling center on the moon ready to put that helium 3 to use. Space exploration should be nearing a stage where it is completely self sufficient and because it wouldn't rely on Earthen resources, pretty much dirt cheap.

We could easily start flinging satellites and probes across the solar system, at which time we could start working on a way to cheaply export people into space. I just think right now space exploration in general is all over the place and has a pretty loose foundation, and the high costs coupled with meager returns makes it almost not even worth it.

Wouldn't finding oil be the same as finding evidence of life? Or am I missing something here?

As for mining, I don't know how much use it would be right now, getting it down here would be no easy feat. Too large and all that ore would be little more than an meteor. All the ore would need to be processed in space as far as I see it, construction could be done there too and to get all this going I think NASA is already doing a good job, the space station is the first step towards such things.

You won't find oil on any planet that doesn't have life, or at least had life in the past. Oil is made up basically out of decayed dead organic stuff.

There are lots of various minerals and metals that would be on the moon, other planets, on asteriods, etc, but unless there were a valid financial reason to go to all that effort to get it, there isn't any point to doing it.

Mining other planets makes the most sense once we actually start to colonize other worlds. Mining the moon to build moon cities, for instance, rather than shipping material from earth to the moon.

Exactly mining the moon and Mars is just the first step to colonizing space but first things first we have TO be self sufficient out there.

I think this a pretty good piece