NASA Administrator says space shuttles and stations are mistakes big time!!!!

Thats not the issue of this thread. I beleive that we should have had colonies ont eh moon by christmas year 2000. The issue of this thread is if the ISS and the Shuttle were a "mistake" not about the new plan proposed to send people to the moon for 2018.

See when you guys speak of an 'elevator' what exactly do you mean?

Laser launched 'containers' into space?

An affordable launch craft that can transport stuff up to space easily?

Or that thing on Discovery a few years back with a massive elevator shaft 30km or whatever it was up into space?

I wouldn't say the ISS and space shuttle were full mistakes, they are necessary steps on the road.

OK, perhaps a space station a little deeper into space would have been better - as a shorter term goal than going to Mars, they should be looking at a space station on the moon, surely that makes more sense. They could build it underground and it would afford a great deal more protection than that offered by the ISS...

I think they are refering to the lazer tether...

Where they have a tether of some material whether it be metal or some type of polymer. And then they launch things up via lazer purpulsion.

Xeven - good post, and I like your strategy as well, I'm a big fan of the space elevator, I just wish more people knew what is was...Cause if everyone knew how much it would completely change the way we see space today, it would be built in no time.

Mizar - You wouldn't need the CEV to build the elevator, you can just use normal unmanned rockets like Delta/Atlas/Falcon.

Resistance - I would wecome you to ATS...But after reading all of your posts...i'll pass.

I am so sick of all these crazing conspiracy theories out there. and you are buying them all, hook, line, and sinker.

As for the question which you have repeatedly asked: It will take us that long because of several reasons...One being we still have the shuttle until 2010, and the ISS is still under construction, so much of Nasa's budget is going to that. Not to mention that this time Nasa isn't going just to stick a flag in the ground, there planning much more long term. And the lander this time will be much more advanced and 3 times larger then the Apollo ones. They didn't forget how to go to the moon. and its not like there going to just blow the dust off the Saturn V blueprints and start building them...technology has changed much in that time, and it would be very dumb to re-build those rockets and then have to spend a lot more money updating them to todays specs. In 2008 Nasa will launch there moon probe, and one of its prime objectives is to find the best place to land. back in 69' that wasn't important, because these days we want to land closes to the water/ice, as that would be the best place to start our building.

and what was that utter garbage about the Hubble being Virtual Reality?

resistance
And Hubble's pics are virtual relality. It's more of a computer than it is a telescope. It can't even get us a good picture of the moon

No its more telescope then a computer, but it does have a relative amount of computer power, which it needs to since its being controlled from earth.
And it was never meant for looking at the moon, or the earth for that matter, it was designed to view things that are far far away. An example would be: Take your telescope and after looking at a planet, point it at your neighbors house, you will still see it, but it will be fuzzy and unfocused...Thats what hubbles pictures of the moon look like, it can not get shots of it in great detail, dispite being closer to it.

It's a fallacy that the bigger the telescope the farther out in space you can see.

It has to do with the light gathered by the mirror, which means the bigger your mirror, the more light, the farther you can see, and if yours mirror is really big...then obviuosly your telescope will be bigger.
Your posts indicate that if you dont understand it...You dont believe it...Dispite all the scientists and billions of dollars sunk ito it.

You can't see what isn't there.

What are you talking about? If you can see it...its their. Also, different telescopes run different spectrums, making them see what our naked eye cannot.

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Murcielago]

Originally posted by Frosty
I can't believe Micheal Griffin has made it this easy for some of you to buy into Bush's political goal. This is propoganda people, such as it was the first time. Let's get to the moon first before the commies do. That's what this is all about. There is nothing on the moon worth going back to, this is the cold hard truth.

'Propaganda', you know that if it were Kerry's or Gore's plan you'd be 100% for it... And 'political goal'?! Bush isn't trying to get re-elected anymore. Welcome to 2005 Frosty. Helium 3, trying to live there to see if it can be done on Mars, where there might be better things than Helium 3.

Taking the space elevator thing seriously, how on earth would you deploy the cable?

Originally posted by kilcoo316
Taking the space elevator thing seriously, how on earth would you deploy the cable?

LiftPort, Is currently the only company with actual plans on building one (by 2018), and this is the link to their "Frequently Asked Questions" page...It will answer probably all of your questions.

LiftPort FAQ Page

here ya go kilco...

www.abovetopsecret.com...'


sorry, i dont know why it wont hyperlink....but it will work cut and paste.

[edit on 29-9-2005 by snafu7700]

Originally posted by NWguy83

Originally posted by Frosty
I can't believe Micheal Griffin has made it this easy for some of you to buy into Bush's political goal. This is propoganda people, such as it was the first time. Let's get to the moon first before the commies do. That's what this is all about. There is nothing on the moon worth going back to, this is the cold hard truth.

'Propaganda', you know that if it were Kerry's or Gore's plan you'd be 100% for it... And 'political goal'?! Bush isn't trying to get re-elected anymore. Welcome to 2005 Frosty. Helium 3, trying to live there to see if it can be done on Mars, where there might be better things than Helium 3.

I could care less if Gore or Kerry were the ones to introduce the plan. Fact is that Helium-3 is not yet or in the near future a viable means of obtaining thermonuclear energy.

The ignition temperature is about 10 fold that of a conventional thermonuke reactor making it damn near impossible to generate more energy than what is put in to get the fusion process going if it can even happen. This is a problem that haunts most all nuclear reactors. And there are no helium-3 reactors in existence. There is also helium-3 in the oceans. A better idea would be to find a way to breed helium-3 in a thermonuclear reactor much like uranium does plutonium and thorium does uranium in a nuclear reactor or finding a way to create this material in a lab.

200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium.
alt-e.blogspot.com...

That is an insane amount of dirt to bring back, it would take thousands of trips to bring a suffecient amount of this material back to earth costing in the trillions. What would be the point of this especially when there are no Helium-3 reactors?

Originally posted by snafu7700
sorry, i dont know why it wont hyperlink....but it will work cut and paste.

Remove the apostaphy on the end.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Here is a link for the space elevator at Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org...

The ribbon cable would have to be made of carbon nanotubes, which is still being developed and would need to extend 2 times out as far as geosynchronous orbit, so that's about 60,000 miles long. It will be more than a decade before we can do that. If it ever gets built though it will be 10 times cheaper to deploy something into orbit. If a craft were launched near the end of the tether, it will have all the angular momentum behind it to get to Mars or wherever without burning any fuel.

Originally posted by Mizar
I wouldn't say they were mistakes. I would say they are unwise decisions.

AWESOME, Mizor!!!!!!

Thanks for the links guys


But nothing really covered how they would get the tether spaceborne... I guess they could use a Balloon for the lower altitude bit, but after that?? Can a balloon go so high as to be intercepted by the space shuttle?


Its not exactly like they can send the tether up in the shuttle and have a fella go out in a space suit and drop the cable down to the lads below... is it??

Theres no need for people...so need need for the ubber expensive shuttle.
Just use a big rocket...Obviously not one rocket...But several. and connect the cables (ribbons), there would have to be a lot of connections, since it would be 62,000 miles.

I bit back I found a site that describes the whole process is great detail...I should have found it by tomorrow.

Originally posted by Murcielago
I bit back I found a site that describes the whole process is great detail...I should have found it by tomorrow.

Nah, don't panic, just as long as someone has figured it out!

Originally posted by kilcoo316

Originally posted by Murcielago
I bit back I found a site that describes the whole process is great detail...I should have found it by tomorrow.

Nah, don't panic, just as long as someone has figured it out!

ok...i've done some looking but cant find the site...But yes, its all been worked out.

HAL9000
it will be 10 times cheaper to deploy something into orbit.

Cheaper then that.
Right now it costs a staggering $20,000 per pound to be launched into space...The Elevator will lower that number it a mere $400 per pound.
Thats 50 times cheaper!


and for everyone else out there who doesn't understand the Space Elevator concept, and doesn't like to read pages apon pages of info...then heres a video animation of it for ya.

Video Animation of the Space Elevator Concept

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Murcielago]

[edit on 29-9-2005 by Murcielago]

Space elevator is proposed to be 62,000 miles high. They've even said that it would take one of those climbing lifts an entire week to go that high. Sure it's a nice CONCEPT, but we'll just see how plausible it is in real life. Nuclear powered aircraft anyone?

Originally posted by NWguy83
Space elevator is proposed to be 62,000 miles high. They've even said that it would take one of those climbing lifts an entire week to go that high. Sure it's a nice CONCEPT, but we'll just see how plausible it is in real life. Nuclear powered aircraft anyone?

It wont go the way of that...anything with the word "nuclear" is immediatly criticized.

and yes, it will take a week, it will travel around 200 mph...Making G's a thing of the past.

Also...I believe the "week" thing is for the full 62,000 miles of it, which will likely only be travelled at its beginning stages when the climbers have to go the the way up it to build it. But if you just want to use it to place you satellite into a Low-Earth-Orbit, it would only take it a couple hours. and if you want it in GEO orbit then it would take a little over 2 days. Which is pretty good, considering rockets usually are delayed because of technical problems for that same amount of time.

kilcoo316 - ah ha, tricky bastards changed the sites address, But i found it.

Its a good read, and shows some cool looking renderings, like the "way station"(below). Which is a space station at 22,000 miles up, making it completely Zero gravity, unlike our current ISS which needs boosts upwards every now and them because of the earths pull.

Hoist to the Heavens

Excellent read~! It answered many of the questions I had concerning such a device.