Moon Base!

POSTED BY: Calhoun
UPDATED: Thursday, February 19, 2004 05:44
VIEWED: 10570
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HERO

Friday, January 16, 2004 4:55 PM

Well, I've read all the musings and thoughts. My favorite was that this is an election ploy. HA! Good one. To some people everything Bush does is about getting reelected. They labor under the theory that a Republican President can take no action that benefits anyone. They can enact no policy that does anything, because simply doing the job of being President might make people inclined to vote for Bush in 2004.

This is nothing new. It is simply an outgrowth of the liberal refusal to accept the outcome of the 2000 election. My view is, right or wrong the issue is settled. Bush is the President. The mere fact that I and my state voted him into office is not relevant. Sure, everyone obsesses about Florida, but its Ohio that put him over the top. And West Virginia. Don't forget Tennessee. Oh, and New Hamphshire. Many states who haven't gone Republican since the end of Reconstruction.

Now, about space. The new commitment to space is a direct result of the shuttle disaster one year ago. In addition to the review of the accident, the President asked the Vice-President to do a review of NASA to answer several questions:

1. What the hell are we doing?
2. What COULD we do?
3. What should we do?
4. And how much will it cost?

NASA has now dusted off all those plans they had in the '70s. Turns out they had all these plans: Space Shuttle, space station, Moon, Mars. Only the Space Shuttle was built after Carter slashed the budget. Given the economic and political situation it was probably the right thing to do. Now we can afford to throw a billion dollars around here and there so when the new costs came out Bush jumped on the plan.

Everything else aside we need to go back to the moon. For cheap offworld mining, industry, solar power and a big assed rock covered space station that we don't have to cart up in pieces on our twenty year old shuttles.

Mars is still a big unknown. But putting a man (call me sexist and ethnocentric) and I mean a red blooded all-American MAN (ok, I'd settle for an American woman and ethnic origin is not relevant to one's 'Americanness, but the red blood is a deal breaker) on Mars is a great work. Great nations have the responsibilty to engage in great works. History demands it.

There. Its all settled. Now lets all get busy lobbying NASA to name one of its new space planes "Serenity". We probably can't get the first one, the Star Trek lobby has us outgunned.

But maybe a "Serenity Valley" on the moon...

H

DITHER

Sunday, January 18, 2004 5:50 AM

So should I buy my Mars acreage now and beat the rush?

http://www.moonestates.com/cat_Nov01.asp

WULFHAWK

Sunday, January 18, 2004 7:10 AM

To those doubters above...

The sun shines on the lunar surface unimpeded by atmosphere, for 2 weeks continuously. The amount of energy you could capture with some simple mirrors and heat cycle engines is stupendous...not to mention silicon based solar cells that could likely get made right there from lunar dust.

Orbital construction materials don't need to be hugely expensive stuff, it just is because the expense of shipping it up there from Earth makes the cost of the item a non-issue. Lunar concrete, lunar glass, solar-forged dust bricks, and refined metals would be fine for a spacestation. Or even for a large scale spaceship.

So, a base on the lunar surface would have all the cheap electricity, vacuum, heat, refrigeration, and rock you could EVER need. Earth's burgeoning space economy will need cheap construction materials, and lots of it. Sounds like someone could make a real fortune with a little investment, doesn't it? Re-invest that in large scale solar power 'generating stations', and you'd be SELLING SUNSHINE to Earth orbit and Earth herself pretty soon.

Watch for laws allowing corporate management of extraterrestrial resources very soon.

Take my love
Take my land

TEELABROWN

Sunday, January 18, 2004 2:05 PM

Quote:
Everything else aside we need to go back to the moon. For cheap offworld mining, industry, solar power and a big assed rock covered space station that we don't have to cart up in pieces on our twenty year old shuttles.

BELTERS!

............................................................................................
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Keep flyin', and remember, THEY can't take the sky from US!

TEELABROWN

Sunday, January 18, 2004 2:09 PM

Quote:
The sun shines on the lunar surface unimpeded by atmosphere, for 2 weeks continuously. The amount of energy you could capture with some simple mirrors and heat cycle engines is stupendous...not to mention silicon based solar cells that could likely get made right there from lunar dust.

Orbital construction materials don't need to be hugely expensive stuff, it just is because the expense of shipping it up there from Earth makes the cost of the item a non-issue. Lunar concrete, lunar glass, solar-forged dust bricks, and refined metals would be fine for a spacestation. Or even for a large scale spaceship.

So, a base on the lunar surface would have all the cheap electricity, vacuum, heat, refrigeration, and rock you could EVER need. Earth's burgeoning space economy will need cheap construction materials, and lots of it. Sounds like someone could make a real fortune with a little investment, doesn't it? Re-invest that in large scale solar power 'generating stations', and you'd be SELLING SUNSHINE to Earth orbit and Earth herself pretty soon.

Watch for laws allowing corporate management of extraterrestrial resources very soon.

Well, nothing is ever safe from money. And the good buisness men, who know how to use that money. And, sooner or later, you would be selling sunlight and Earth back to ourselves. So should we all invest early, so we make that small fortune?

............................................................................................
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Keep flyin', and remember, THEY can't take the sky from US!

HERO

Monday, January 19, 2004 6:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by TeelaBrown:
Well, nothing is ever safe from money. And the good buisness men, who know how to use that money. And, sooner or later, you would be selling sunlight and Earth back to ourselves. So should we all invest early, so we make that small fortune?

Well the alternative is to allow the UN to manage the exploration and subsequent exploitation of offworld resources. Call me a Browncoat but it don't seem right to expect the US and a few other nations bear the cost and risk then expect to give Micronesia, Ghana, and Costa Rica the same access and rights. If they want to join us, then fine, but as minority shareholders not equal partners.

Besides UN management does not work. Otherwise we'd all be getting our oil from Antartica.

Overegulation of resources causes stupid skewed results. For example, I live less then 100 miles from one of the world's largest natural gas reserves (the largest being FOX Television). Yet I can't afford to turn my heat above 68 because of my high gas bills and Federal laws against drilling in that area.

So buy that land on the moon. Oh, btw, as an attorney I reviewed the legality of the guy who is selling lots on the moon and Mars. Under the Outer Space Treaty and the prperty laws of the various countries he is correct in what he is saying. Legally he owns and can exploit the moon and Mars. However, despite the fact he is correct no court will enforce his ownership rights because of public interest concerns (unless he files in California).

JEC
ALD

TRAVELINGTHEBLACK

Saturday, February 7, 2004 4:07 AM

No offense Hero, but there is no oil in the south pole. Oil comes from the dead, and their ain't enough life on that massive iceberg to sustain a shack in Alabama.

Regulation does work 'cause without it Enron would of bled California dry. Exxon wouldn't be paying for the Valdez disaster and so on. Without regulation, our solar system would become a corpie playground. I dunno about the rest of you, but a browncoat would rather have the U.N. over the corpies anyday. At least the U.N. has no profit margin.

Anyway, that's my opinion. The lesser of two evils is the U.N.

Mercy is the mark of a great man... *stab*

ROCKETJOCK

Saturday, February 7, 2004 7:21 AM

One lunar resource no one has mentioned on this thread yet is helium-3. It's more than just a buzz-word from "Space, Above and Beyond", He3 is quite possibly the key to clean, sustainable fusion reactions, and the nearest source is Luna.

"It's raining soup out there, and the bean counters are telling us we can't afford soup bowls." --Dr. Jerry Pournelle "A Step Farther Out", Galaxy Magazine 1975

"There was a great land rush coming a quarter of a million miles away from earth across the Armstrong Sea." --Homer H. Hickam Jr., "Back to The Moon", Dell, 1999

RocketJock

FLAMETREE

Sunday, February 8, 2004 12:51 AM

I have found the disussion interesting.

I didn't see if anyone mentioned it but
one way of providing a safer moon habitat is to di down.

This would provide protection from radiation and minor metorites at least.

Also if you want more space you just dig more.

Given that the moon is not an active body it should be pretty easy to do.

No its not a new idea but that doesn't mean it wrong :)

HERO

Sunday, February 8, 2004 12:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by TravelingTheBlack:
No offense Hero, but there is no oil in the south pole. Oil comes from the dead, and their ain't enough life on that massive iceberg to sustain a shack in Alabama.

You inspired me to look up oil futures on the net. Guess what? You are correct. The south pole is very cold. Nothing lives there. No oil comes from the south pole. Antarctica is a different story.

Once upon a time all the continents upon which we now live were all mushed together. Over time they broke apart and drifted into their present locations. One continent, which we call Antarctica was teeming with prehistoric life. One day it awoke to find itself sitting on the south pole. Bad luck. Everything died and was buried in the ice.

Add a few hundred million years of pressure and presto: an oil field, natural gas field, probably a little coal, not to mention metals. I refer everyone to: < http://minerals.er.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/country/1995/9501095.pdf>

Quote:
Regulation does work 'cause without it Enron would of bled California dry. Exxon wouldn't be paying for the Valdez disaster and so on. Without regulation, our solar system would become a corpie playground. I dunno about the rest of you, but a browncoat would rather have the U.N. over the corpies anyday. At least the U.N. has no profit margin.

ENRON is a good example. Ingoring the whole accounting scandal and looking back to the price gouging during the California energy crisis its easy to blame the greedy corporations.

California itself caused the crisis in the first place. First they kept growing, thus increasing demand for energy. Then they regulated their domestic power industry to prevent the construction of new power plants. Then they noticed that increasing demand and static supply was causing the price to go up, so they regulated the consumer prices. Then all their power companies went bankrupt and they lacked domestic power resources to meet needs ( a double whammy). Then they had to pay premium prices to out of state companies who in true corporate fashion sought the best price they could get (corporations being responsible to the shareholders before the public...much less the public of a foriegn state that had just regualted its own companies out of business).

So you conclude that government regulation (from an agency like the UN) is preferable to corporate greed. The lesser of two evils. You believe a Browncoat would make the same choice.

A Browncoat would find a third choice. A choice that minimizes govt intrusion and corporate dominiation. In other words true Browncoats strike off in a third direction, towards independance. Its a notion that drives a man to start his own business, put himself through college, to do a job and get paid, volunteer to defend freedom or oppose tyranny, and maybe carve off a little piece of the 'verse to call his own. Thats a Browncoat.

H

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