Ok, I'd say it has more to do with Nasa being on the verge of just another bureaucracy. What have they done that is innovative or inspired in the past thirty years? Nothing. The space shuttle was a better design, but once they built it what did they do next? Nothing. This is the problem with people who stop looking for answers and are more worried about how they will get through a few extra dollars in the budget next year. It is shameful that as technology is progressing in leaps and bounds, the research into space travel is only done by researchers and corporations.

I guess I can't blame them exclusively, the people in the US aren't very supportive, or interested, in space at all. The only stars they desire is the kind you find driving drunk around hollywood. People complain about the money spent on a war, which no matter which viewpoint you have, we are already in. How much would they complain about the waste of money on a pointless trip to the moon. I remember hearing about groups that wish to ban all manned space travel, since it is too expensive, and a risk to the lives of the people who go.

I've actually read similar scenarios in some of the scifi books I've read. The space agency spent almost as much time trying to get interest in outer space and keeping the funding going, as they did on traveling through space. No I have to wonder if it was modeled off of Nasa?

Seriously, though, you're question is good. The answer: that may well change. And, it may well be that private companies are going to finance much of the future moon missions. And NASA hasn't given up, yet.

Political money goes only to where the votes, popularity, or power is. The moon served its political necessity right after the first man landed on the moon. The political money shifted to other uses.

"commercial" money goes to where an individual or group thinks they will get the most out of it. As long as the commerical money gets what the people are interested in, it will continue. Unlike the government, a commecial operation for profit, needs only enough to pay for itself and a little more.There is room for plenty of competition.
Governemnt does not like competition. There are plenty of examples where the government passes laws that forbids private enterprizes from competing, Delivering first class letters is one example. Only the US post office are allowed to deliver them. Anyone else has to use a larger envelope.
We have satellite phones dish TV, etc., because there is commercial competition. A lot of them were launched by rockets in other countries simply because it was easier and cheeper than Nasa's dependance on the shuttle.

Competition brings out the best of the industry. Commercial enterprises will find the optimal way to do things, and they will find ways to make it available. they won't do it as fast as an influx of government money, but they won't have the government red tape and paperwork that government agencies are required to provide. they also, by nature, have less people involved and therefore cheeper, simply because there is less paperwork involved.

If you want regular trips to the moon, allow someone to set up a hotel there and let tourism have access to the moon.

It should be noted that entering and leaving a gravitational well is expensive. We won't be doing heavy colonization of any of the planets if government is not involved. We will be colonizing asteroids instead as it takes little energy to land on one. Mining them will be cheeper. planets are more for scientists and politicians, than for anything of real use.

When one sends a person into space, the soul purpose of the mission is to get the person back alive and safe. Anything else done is a secondary mission.

Like Antarctica, one is forbidden to go to the moon as a commercial venture such as mining. Tourism is even frowned on.

Money and motivation, I'd say. "Money" because, once NASA accomplished the goal of putting man on the moon, their budgets were cut---they didn't even get enough money to carry out three more planned missions. And what kind of message did that send to the guys who busted their butts getting the mission accomplished?

"Money" again, because it wasn't cheap to go to the moon...that prevented the private sector from copping the technology for itself and putting it to use...the private sector likes things that don't cost, er, the moon, to do.

I suppose "motivation" would be a factor. The Apollo project was conceived partly for scientific knowledge (and paid off with it, too), but mostly to send a message to the world about the relative worth of the USA vs the USSR. There hasn't been anything comparable after that...after the Johnson administration, the government chose to either (a) ratchet the USA / USSR conflict down, or (b) confront the Soviets in other areas. The USA public has generally approved of the space program, but this has not been sufficient to do more than pencil in some big budget items. The private sector lacks the profit motive.

I know three people who "say" they invented and tried to patent better carburetors and were visited by "men in black" types who told them to forget it or else. Are they all lying? I don't know. But the same type mentality could be keeping the brakes on a lot of other good inventions for the world but bad for "people in power" types?

Of course, now we've been and realised it's too far away from Earth to be useful for weapons: if we launched missiles from the Moon we'd be as likely to hit our own countries as the bad guys.

And there ain't much there aside from moonrock. No oil. No air. No water. Just a great view of home and less gravity than usual.

We'll go there again when we have imaginative politicians, innovative engineers, inquisitive scientists and brave pilots in charge. Or when someone realises it's the ideal place for tax-free brothels, casinos and opium dens.

Ever optimistically,
Pat

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if we launched missiles from the Moon we'd be as likely to hit our own countries as the bad guys

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I'm not 100% certain about that - we'd likely be every bit as accurate as current ICBM's. The problem being, you'd need an awful lot of fuel to get that missile back here, even after spending even more fuel to get them there in the first place. Now, planetary observations from the moon? That might be cool.

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we'd likely be every bit as accurate as current ICBM's.

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My remark was more satirical than serious--should'a put in a smiley, I guess.

I was thinking of how NASA lost a Mars orbiter because one engineering team used Imperial measurements and another used Metric.

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

We Brits lost Beagle 2 entirely--we don't even know whether it crash-landed or missed the red planet entirely. And this after deciding not to join America in putting men into space, arguing that machines can do everything that's useful to do in space that men can--aside from realising they're lost and radioing back to base to tell us what went wrong, apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2

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The problem being, you'd need an awful lot of fuel to get that missile back here, even after spending even more fuel to get them there in the first place.

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As I think of it, my remark was more daft than I realized. Aside from having to fly the fuel to the moon, it might use less fuel to fly from the moon to Earth, because distance in space doesn't matter. As I'm sure we-all know, once you're going, inertia will carry you forwards in a straight line for light-years. Since the moon's gravity is less than Earth's, and therefore easier to escape, it might be quite fuel-efficient to lob missiles at Earth from a moon-station--although as you observe, getting the fuel up there would be expensive and no doubt negate all the savings.

If we could make fuel up there, or launch solar-powered rockets from the dark side (when it's facing the Sun), then it might work. And we'd be taking our first baby steps towards exporting war into space.

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On losing missions...many of the losses, if a man had been on it, the man could've altered things and saved and salvaged the mission.

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Absolutely right. That's one reason I'm so annoyed with the British leadership who decided otherwise.

Also, NASA learned so very, very much about keeping people alive by sending men to the moon, knowledge that surely found its way into modern medical practice. I'm sure the spin-off knowledge alone justifies going to the moon, Mars and further.

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it might be quite fuel-efficient to lob missiles at Earth from a moon-station

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NOT DRUNK ENOUGH.

“Has the universe come to an end?”

Not quite yet.

Well I say we lobby to get NASA to pull its head out of its @$$ and or start our own version of NASA, we could call it HASA. And land a man on the moon in the next 5 years with help from other countries who would not mind going there. We could build our version of the Saturn 5 rocket with off the shelf technology and better computers etc.
Space based weapons are not all that expensive. Wipe out a few cities from orbit they pay for them selves. But international treaties prohibit space based weapons.
I think according to my calculations it would cost about 100,000,000.00 USD to build with off the shelf technology and launch to the moon 4 people, land and return. He!! Most of what we need is already made, and sitting in rocket bone yards left over from the COLD WAR. Old ICBM’S and rocket motors, etc. or maybe I am just crazy.

and i thought this topic was not going to get many responces.

SHOULD BE HOME IN UNDER 25 DAYS.

SHOULD BE HOME IN UNDER 25 DAYS.

Rommel Fenrir Wolf II
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SHOULD BE HOME IN UNDER 25 DAYS.

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cant waite till i can see the good old US of A again.

i take it no one liked my HASA idea.

So far the vessel carrying crew has ben designed and is being built. But the vessel carrying equipment/cargo hasn't been funded yet.

That's really difficult to pull off. So, in addition to the reasons ya'll stated, its really hard to go to the moon right now.

I have a Russian friend who says we haven't gone back to the moon because we have not had enemies that would force us into space to control the earth from space.

John Lear, the son of famous Bill Lear, of LearJet fame, says there is a secret astronaut corp that has been going to Mars and that the moon is currently being mined for helium 3 as an energy source. He says he has first-hand astronaut and militray witnesses who, off the record, will attest that this is true and that he got this information from them. John says the secret missions are launched from remote atolls in the South Pacific.

Then there's Richard C. Hoagland, ex-science adviser to Walter Cronkite, who maintains almost the same thing. He says there are anomalous and perhaps manmade (or alien?) structures on the moon and Mars. And how did they get there? Though he won't actually come to a decision, he does present interesting data. He can be found at <http://www.enterprisemission.com>

Except it's the only rational explanation for George Bush suddenly wanting to send men to the moon.
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-bush-space-0114,0,4190003.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

It's either that or he really does harbour a "desire to explore and understand."

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And just what would anybody use Helium-3 for?

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I wondered about that myself, and found out that apparently it might be a source of power from nuclear fusion--and it exists on the moon.

Mining the moon for helium 3 has been suggested by Jack Schmitt, who happens to have visited the place and has a PhD in geology:
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/BookReviewTypeDetail/assetid/5 0749;jsessionid=aaadpYS5mhhih2

It's in very small quantities though. You'd have to mine hundreds of millions of tons of lunar soil for a ton of the stuff.

A rich seam of ideas to, um, mine for Luna stories?

Cheers,
Pat

[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited May 05, 2008).]

The more outrageous the truth is, the less likely anyone is to believe it.

After all, people have this weird sense of "normal", and they utterly disregard anything that they see as outside the sphere of normality.

For example, they can believe that we went to the moon in 1960-whatever, but they can't believe that we've still been going there, have moon bases, and are stockpiling massive silos of Helium-3 there in order to fuel ships that go to Mars.

Also, the unions would be complaining bitterly about miners pay and conditions, and people would be selling genuine moonrock souvenirs on eBay and sending back pictures of the Earth taken on the moon with cell phones.

Cheers,
Pat

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I don't believe we've been going there and mining anything. If we had, several million amateur astronomers would have noticed the space-trucks bearing spare parts from Caterpillar, and puffs of dust all over the moon's surface as they mine moonrocks.

Also, the unions would be complaining bitterly about miners pay and conditions, and people would be selling genuine moonrock souvenirs on eBay and sending back pictures of the Earth taken on the moon with cell phones.

Cheers,
Pat

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All of those things could be taken care of with enough money, Pat. Also, puffs of dust? There is a dark side of the moon, you know. All they would have to do is make sure to stay inside of it.

and that includes the Hubble in orbit. With the Hubble it was that the moon is too close, I believe, was the reason

if the moon is being mined for He3 there would be affects like more shooting stars as moon roke and dust drawn in my earths gravity.

who wants to donate $1,000,000.00 to my mon progect? it will get you one shiping contaner sized room you can viset ro timeshair out

So my little attempt at satire didn't work then :-(

As such, they say there is no conspiracies. That proves there has to be one!!!

The space aliens are doing it and are also in control of our government.
how else can you explain the idiots we have in elected office?

As for me, I really want a health care program with the efficiency of the highway department with the bedside manners of the IRS.

Indeed, had NASA been allowed to persevere (and had the UK and other countries contributed their brain power too) we might well be doing so by now. We're intellectually capable of developing the technology necessary to establish a colony there, I believe. But we seem to be happier arguing amongst ourselves about planetary resources than finding more, and spending our money and our brainpower on weapons than space technology.

You can buy a ticket into space from Virgin:

http://www.virgingalactic.com/

(I love how they call it "Virgin Galactic". They're actually only planning to do "suborbital space tourism"--today suborbit, tomorrow the galaxy, I suppose. That's not a complaint, I'm just amused by Branson's grand design.)

I'm pleased that someone in the commercial world has the vision to try to get into space, and Rutan's getting a chance to contribute his considerable expertise.

Cheers,
Pat

The longer answer is that it would really only be feasable if we were doing it as a noah's ark situation where we are trying to get as much life to other stars as possible, abandoning earth. In that case, if we put all our resources to it, we could get several billion people heading to the stars in a hundred years.

The fun part of the series of notes was to figure out the steps to get to that point.

http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/prop06apr99_1a.htm

I love the Lightcraft (at the bottom of the page)--it looks like a flying saucer!

your welcome for the idea. takes it off my mind.

"nuclear pulse-bomb drives and Somebody who's willing to use that would have to want to get off the Earth real bad."

sounds like me where do i find one?

love the flying sauser. looks so 1950ish space like.

RFW2nd

I was listening to some guys from hhowater4gas.com tonight. They say they have plans available for a conversion of a regular car to one that runs partially on hydrogen. They say they have outfits in a number of cities across the country that will convert your car or you can download the plans for free and do it for yourself.

If we had discovered life, gold, oil, etc. then the moon would be like the Americas were to Europeans a few centuries ago.