WASHINGTON (Dec. 4) - NASA may be going to the same old moon with a ship that looks a lot like a 1960s Apollo capsule, but the space agency said Monday that it's going to do something dramatically different this time: Stay there.
Unveiling the agency's bold plan for a return to the moon, NASA said it will establish an international base camp on one of the moon's poles, permanently staffing it by 2024, four years after astronauts land there.
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NASA chose a "lunar outpost" over the short expeditions of the '60s. Apollo flights were all around the middle area of the moon, but NASA decided to go to the moon's poles because they are best for longer-term settlements. And this time NASA is welcoming other nations on its journey.
The more likely of the two lunar destinations is the moon's south pole because it's sunlit for three-quarters of the time. That offers a better locale for solar power, plus the site has possible resources to mine nearby, said associate deputy administrator Doug Cooke.
"This is not your father's Apollo," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. "I think it's the only way to sustain something like this over decades. This is not a flag-and-footprints. This is the idea of starting an outward movement that includes long stays on the moon."
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Last year, NASA said it would cost $104 billion just to get back to the moon for its first trip, but on Monday NASA officials declined to estimate the larger costs of a permanent lunar program. They just said it would stay within NASA's budget.
The estimated time frame for NASA's lunar plans are:
2009 - a first test of one of the lunar spaceships.
2014 - the first manned test flight of the Orion crew exploration vehicle, but no moon landing.
2020 - the first flight of the four-astronaut crew to the moon.
For four years, the lunar base won't be built up enough for long visits, so astronauts will only spend a week at a time. But after that, NASA envisions people living on the moon for six-month stints.
NASA also hopes that hydrogen, oxygen and other moon resources can be used as supplies for the lunar outpost. Eventually, getting oxygen there may be simple enough that it could be turned over to a commercial supplier, Horowitz said.
NASA's vision for the moon is more than just American astronauts - it includes space travelers from other countries and even commercial interests, if possible.
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The key decision for NASA in its planning was whether to have a permanent settlement, and that drove other decisions, Dale said. Going with a permanent base was an outcome of NASA asking itself and more than 1,000 experts from 14 nations the questions: "Why are we returning to the moon and what we plan to do when we get there?"
Two key themes, according to NASA, were to prepare for future exploration, with Mars the next stop, and expansion of human civilization. Both NASA's science and engineering communities agreed on a permanent outpost, an agreement rare for two conflicting sides of the agency, Horowitz said.
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for some odd reason, while the word "Ganya" was still just a thought-dropping in my head, I thought it'd only be four letters. But apparently it's five. yep.
Promising the Moon
Despite a history of failed projects and the inevitable budget questions, NASA's plan to build a base on the moon's south lunar pole could be the real deal
By JEFFREY KLUGER
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHORNASA: Mission to Mars
Archive: Poised for the Leap
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 05, 2006
Heard anything from America's manned moon base lately? You know, the one that was supposed to have gotten underway in the 1970s, just a handful of years after the Apollo 11 landing? No? What about news on the upcoming Mars landing, the one President George H.W. Bush called for in 1989 and should be deep in development by now? Not a word, right? And you're not likely to hear anything about that either.
If 50 years of exploring-and not exploring-space has taught us anything, it's that when it comes to building vaporware, nobody beats NASA and the politicians behind it. The manned space program has distinguished itself for some of the most ingenious machinery ever built-vehicles unlike any ever imagined before because they were meant to travel in environments no one had ever explored before. But the space program has been equally defined by its dreams come to naught: big plans promised by politicians with no money to follow them up; big blueprints shown off by engineers without any constituency elsewhere in the agency.
Space watchers could thus be forgiven for being wary Monday, when NASA announced its plans for a manned moon base in the south lunar pole, a settlement that it says should be up and running in 2020 and permanently occupied in 2024. A manned space program that has done nothing but circle the harbor of low-Earth orbit since 1972—losing 14 astronauts to accidents in the process—hardly seems likely to pull off something so daring, especially when it's got an 18-year deadline in which funding and governmental enthusiasm for the project could easily melt away.
And yet there's plenty of reason for cautious optimism. After trying to reinvent the technological wheel with the dangerous and temperamental space shuttle, NASA is returning to what it does best. The hardware and crew for the lunar base will be sent into orbit atop comparatively reliable, disposable boosters, based on the sturdy and powerful engines of the shuttle and long-extinct Saturn boosters. The lunar orbital vehicles will be souped-up Apollo command modules and the landers will be similarly updated lunar excursion modules-the lovable, bug-like LEMs. Astronauts on Apollos 15, 16 and 17 already showed that lunar rovers could be safely driven across the moon's surface, providing another proven technology that would be essential to a lunar community.
Even more promising-if far more speculative-is the mission profile for the crews. All of the Apollos landed near the lunar equator, a comparatively easy target for first-time visitors who don't plan to stay too long. A moon base would have to be built in the harder-to-target poles. The perpetual sunshine in most of the extreme north and south means plenty of light for energy-producing solar panels; the perpetual darkness in the shadowed polar regions means a steady supply of water ice, which can be harvested for consumption and fuel manufacture. Currently, the lip of south pole's Shackleton Crater is NASA's favorite site.
There are other, trickier challenges that would have to be overcome. Part of the justification for a lunar base has always been that the moon is rich in helium-3, an isotope of common helium that could serve as fuel in eventual fusion reactors. Astronauts could, in theory, mine the stuff and ship it back to Earth. That's fine, but first we have to, well, invent the reactor. What's more, as the beleaguered crews aboard the International Space Station have discovered, sometimes just maintaining your ship can take all your time and the mission itself-scientific research, mining-gets put off.
Then, of course, there's money. NASA's budget is currently about $17 billion a year, with no increase in sight. The agency insists that's sufficient to build the base, a claim that should become easier to believe after 2010, when the shuttles are mothballed and the space station is done and we quit throwing money into two programs that have long been revenue sinks. The agency hopes to woo international partners too, but after the bust of the space station-a U.S.-led but multi-national program-it may not be so easy to make the sale.
Still, there's no denying that this time NASA is showing both imagination and realism. That, for an agency that has fought so long to regain its Apollo mojo, is truly something. Fourteen years and a couple hundred billion dollars from now, we'll see what it's got us.
There are so many things that could be done, to help people, the economy, etc... with the $104 billion to just get to the moon the first time. Absolute waste of money, in my opinion.
:::>^..^<::: ~*~The Journey is more important than the end or the start~*~ :::>^..^<:::
I disagree. Landing on the moon was not only one of the greatest moments in our nations history, but one of the greatest moments in the history of mankind. For millennia people have looked up to the moon in awe and we freakin' landed there and put up an American' flag!
The U.S. was in a major space race at the time against the Soviets. Can you imagine if they had landed on the moon first?
It is still the belief that whoever controls the skies controls everything below.
A space station on the moon is brilliant. There are so many things to learn up there and I am all freakin' for it.
$104 billion is a drop in the bucket. We've pissed away more on Iraq than that. Except this can really help the scientific community which helps us all.
I mean, people spend tens of billions on music, movies, video games, fast food... something that can help humanity is scoffed at?
Not to mention, we need to look outward into space and really keep exploring it. At some point we are going to outgrow our planet. That's absolute. Not our problem now or even for a few centuries. But our future does lay out there.
I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam. Sounds like a crappy sci fi idea, but the moon is already a nasty place to be.
If a Nuke power plant went bad, aint no big deal. Radiation up there don't hurt nothing.
Whidden said this in post #6 : I'm for it so we can put Nuclear power plants up there, and then beam the power back to earth on a laser beam. Sounds like a crappy sci fi idea, but the moon is already a nasty place to be.
If a Nuke power plant went bad, aint no big deal. Radiation up there don't hurt nothing.
I stand vindicated! SUCKAS!!!!
Getting Power From The Moon
Science Daily — If a physicist in Houston has his way you'll be able to say good-bye to pollution-causing energy production from fossil fuels. In the April/May issue of The Industrial Physicist Dr. David Criswell suggests that the Earth could be getting all of the electricity it needs using solar cells on the moon. In the article Criswell proposes a Lunar Solar Power (LSP) System, using arrays of solar cells on the lunar surface to beam energy back to Earth. Criswell estimates that the 10 billion people living on Earth in 2050 will require 20 Terrawatts (TW) of power. The Moon receives 13,000 TW of power from the sun. Criswell suggests that harnessing just 1% of the solar power and directing it toward Earth could replace fossil fuel power plants on Earth.
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"The lunar operations are primarily industrial engineering," says Criswell. He and Dr, Robert Waldron first described LSP in 1984 at a NASA symposium on Lunar Bases and Space Activities in the 21st Century. "Adequate knowledge of the moon and practical technologies have been available since the late 1970's to collect this power and beam it to Earth. The system can be built on the moon from lunar materials and operated on the moon and on Earth using existing technologies," reducing the expenses associated with transporting materials to the moon. He adds that LSP would be even cheaper if parts of the production machinery are designed to be made of lunar materials.
The LSP system consists of 20-40 lunar power bases, situated on the eastern and western edges of the moon, as seen from Earth. Each power base has a series of solar cells to collect energy from the sun, which is sent over buried electric wires to microwave generators that convert the solar electricity to microwaves. The generators then send the energy to screens that reflect the microwave beams toward Earth, where they are received by arrays of special antennas strategically placed about the globe. "Each antenna converts the microwave power to electricity that is fed into the local power grid," says Criswell.
"LSP is probably the only option for powering a prosperous world within the 21st century," says Criswell. "However, it does require a return to the moon." The system depends on some human occupation of the moon to build and run the lunar bases, but Criswell also sees this as an opportunity. "Once we are back and operating at large scale then going down the various learning curves will make traveling to the moon and working there 'routine."
4 days off, this being the 4th day. Then 3 days back, then 3 days off again. So this is a good thing. Work sucks. And all I asked for was some fregin lasers on some fregin sharks.
Yeah, the moon, whether nuclear power up there, or solar, you can beam it back on microwaves, or a laser beam, whatever, then convert it back to electricity. The big point for nuclear power, is the moon is already a nasty place, with radiation, extreme cold, extreme heat, no one would care if there was some radiation leak, or how you would store the waste. Plus it would be pretty safe from terrorist attacks. I shoulda been a damn scientist. I think I would do well in some kind of think tank.
I thought your laser beam idea was solid. Just for the record I never mocked it. So if you want to spread the royalties for your idea remember who had your back.
Imagine that though, harnessing just 1% of the solar power from the moon. I bet some turds will try to use that power to threaten to microwave other countries.
I'm guessing, and moon venture would have to be approved by the U.N. to avoid wars over any nation taking land on the moon.
You know how people are. I'm thinking some sort of joint venture among the major nations, and they build the deal, then share in the power they get. And they have it run by a multinational team.
12-05-2006 06:29 AM
And all I asked for was some fregin lasers on some fregin sharks. 
