Presidential panel says NASA should skip moon

"NASA needs to make a major detour on its grand plans to return astronauts to the moon, a special independent panel told the White House Thursday."

Hmmm, any other reason?

news.mobile.msn.com...

Chaz.

reply to post by Chaz


Well, that the moon has been done to death ought to be one.

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Stopped counting somewhere over 40.

Mars, on the other hand, I counted only 19 successful missions.

nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov...

NASA should skip everything, until they begin to use anti-gravity ships.
2nd line

I think we are stuck here on Earth like we always were.
Clear thinking men in charge now.
With posts on message boards from Europe and Canada and who
knows where telling Americans the truth about anything from 911
to the Moon we can finally make proper decisions.

Oh no:

concentrating on bigger rockets and new places to explore,

That will do it bigger rockets.

More wrong turns:

no-landing flights around the moon and Mars. Landing on the moon and then launching back to Earth would require a lot of fuel because of the moon's gravity. Hauling fuel from Earth to the moon and then back costs money. It would take less fuel to land and return from asteroids or comets that swing by Earth or even the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos, Augustine said. Eventually, Augustine said NASA could return to the moon, but as a training stepping stone, not a major destination, as the Bush plan envisioned.

Go to asteroid and other Moons for easier liftoffs perhaps.
Skip the Moon first off, but then go back for a base later in the program.

Taxi!

Crawley said the panel liked the idea of a commercially operated, more basic rocket-taxi to get astronauts into the low-Earth orbit of the space station. If NASA spent about $5 billion to help kick-start the embryonic commercial space business to do the people-carrying, then the space agency could concentrate on heavier rockets that do the real far-off exploring, he said.

That's what we do now and may soon be over.

but thats just silly, why put a base on mars if you haven't got one on the moon? its much easier to put one on the moon, more useful and its close enough to get too - mars would be dangerous, costly and fairly pointless.

we could afford to make a simple base on the moon, as we've already messed up the ISS due to politics and now no one will make a proper space station its gonna have to be a surface base - the moon has water along with many other minerals and metals, we could work on creating a solar aray (much more powerfull on moon due to no air) which we then use to produce building materials - these then make a basic area for tourists, scientists and early production. Soon a thriving moon collony is doing all sorts of important stuff while a mars base would cost so much to get too, certainly time wise that very few people would do such a risky trip for tourism - scientists and industry would require much more energy to set up and so would be far more limited - the whole thing is totally impossble using even my wild hopes of tomorrows tech - we need to wait untill at least next week lol!

the moon is possible, viable and useful. using it as a staging post makes plenty of sence, certainly if we're going to make somewhere worth going on mars then we'll need to have something inbetween - a few trips to passing rocks might be interesting, and when we have the ability to mine then very worthwhile, but we won't be setting up any long term bases on them anytime soon.

yet again science is let down by politics!

reply to post by Chaz


oh.... how wonderfully surprising.... i think they should abandon everything.... until they begin to give truth some chance....

reply to post by Chaz


NASA is stuck in the old ways... They were relevant in the 60's but since the cultural aspects of NASA have refused to grow or evolve with the times, it has become an old dinosaur... a jobs scheme... a black hole for money.

When we look at fresh ideas such as Robert Zubrins 'Mars Direct' for instance, and we look even more closely at NASA's reluctance to adapt new methods that don't include the input and payoff of every third party that wants 'in'. We realize that it's time to burn the old wood and rebuild the house from scratch.

My honest opinion is that it should take us less than a year or two to go to the Moon. We got there with ancient technology and now it seems to be a major problem. I call BS!

If the Moon is used as a way point to Mars... then so many more companies are involved, so many more delays, so much more bureaucracy. We simply do not need the Moon as a way point other than to furnish other peoples pockets with billions of dollars. What a gip!

It's not about exploration anymore. It's something else... probably driven by military interests. We went to the Moon and then we went backwards into Earth orbit.. we went to Mars with Viking in 1976 looking for life and then we went backwards.

NASA have surely achieved some great things in the past, but the amount of crap we've endured from them since tips the scales into that of a massive failure.

IRM

reply to post by NatureBoy


Well, Mars harbors many, many, many more mysteries than the moon, the life question being the biggest. Colonizing the moon would be very costly, moreso than building a ship to Mars on Earth.

Maybe TPTB are getting ready to reveal some technology that is old to them but would be new to us. This would be the perfect opportunity to pretend to build more powerful rockets and the perfect excuse to squeeze more money out of us to 'fund' their research. I can't shake the feeling that we're being prepped for something even if it's just throwing us a bone about a new 'discovery'. All we've heard about lately is how all these other countries are building rockets for the sole purpose of going to or taking pictures of the moon, and now suddenly we aren't interested in it anymore? Why? It makes no sense. At the very least, from a military aspect the moon is highly strategic position. Unless, of course, we've been warned off again.

[edit on 23-10-2009 by gazerstar]

wrong thread!

My bad!

[edit on 23/10/09 by InfaRedMan]