NASA Issues

[Elwar]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2007/sep/17/dr-no-sometimes-votes-yes/

"For example, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, he voted to authorize the continuing operation of NASA and to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday on the third Monday in January."

 

[Mithridates]

The moon is a great source of Helium-3. with private competition, a cheaper way of extracting it and returning it could be developed.
With money to be gained, space technology and later exploration would explode.

Under government control, we will never get to mars.
ask the guys from "Mars Direct". Nasa doesn't know a good idea when it hits them in the face.

I'm not a fan of Mars Direct myself, mostly because I'm not a fan of Mars as a locale for manned exploration since the launch windows are so few and far in between. I think Venus' cloudtops and Ceres will make much better locations to colonize than Mars right now.

 

[Mithridates]

helium-3 will power this planet in the post fossil fuel era. Clean, cheap energy that is in abundance on our moon.

The other thing the Moon has are its peaks of eternal light, the only place nearby where you can have solar power for 24 hours a day.

(Well, it would still be blocked out by the odd Earth eclipse so 99.999% of the time)

 

[Visual]

I'm not a fan of Mars Direct myself, mostly because I'm not a fan of Mars as a locale for manned exploration since the launch windows are so few and far in between. I think Venus' cloudtops and Ceres will make much better locations to colonize than Mars right now.

Indeed on ceres. I think it makes more sense than any other place. Only thing is mars is closer, and offers an ability to see the path the earth could have taken if things had gone diffrently. But mars should only be a scientific trip, sort of like the antartic. A permanent base near the asteroid belt (Ceres) offers a better long term viability for many reasons.

 

[Mithridates]

Hah, if Ron does win all it will do is make it easier once we don't pay income tax and can invest all that much more into such a project ^^
Hah.
Revolution 2.0: Elect Ron Paul
Revolution 3.0: Space Edition



Joking aside, this is actually factually feasible.

Let me just insert a Revolution 2.5: Universal second language Edition in there. I'd like to see that happen as soon as possible so that the world is able to pool its resources without the inefficiencies you see now (I know, I work in translation).

 

[Mithridates]

Indeed on ceres. I think it makes more sense than any other place. Only thing is mars is closer, and offers an ability to see the path the earth could have taken if things had gone diffrently. But mars should only be a scientific trip, sort of like the antartic. A permanent base near the asteroid belt (Ceres) offers a better long term viability for many reasons.

Yep. Don't forget though that even though Mars is closer the launch windows to Ceres are more frequent, so in terms of "how often can we get there", Ceres wins there too. I think there's only about an extra month in terms of travel time over Mars.

You wouldn't believe how nervous I was watching Dawn launch.

 

[JosephTheLibertarian]

I'm not a fan of Mars Direct myself, mostly because I'm not a fan of Mars as a locale for manned exploration since the launch windows are so few and far in between. I think Venus' cloudtops and Ceres will make much better locations to colonize than Mars right now.

Why not do them all in the same time?

 

[BizmanUSA]

Noticed a thread over at nasaspaceflight.com regarding presidential candidates. Ron Paul was brought up as being laughable, and was given this response....


Can you explain how Ron Paul is laughable? The man is genuine and the most suited for the job as president. . . .

See page one of this thread to read the entire reply

In any event, you need to realize that Ron Paul will not get the nomination of any party (though he might actually jerk the GOP back a bit towards it's smaller government traditions).

This is a spaceflight forum, not a science fiction forum.

if anybody cares to check out this thread, it's here...
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=9993&start=256&posts=267

LOOK up in the sky - it's a bird, it's a plane, it's NASA - No it's RON PAUL our candidate to the rescue

Hopefully this nasaspaceflight.com forum has only a few of these Special Rocket Scientists!

BizmanUSA

 

[Mithridates]

Why not do them all in the same time?

Eventually, sure. I don't think we're quite there yet. Note the last spacewalk made during the last shuttle mission; it was made to repair a problem in the solar panels that they had no idea existed until the shuttle was sent up there. There was also that slight problem with the metallic dust as well. Now imagine that the same problems are happening while a craft is four months away from the Earth, has no way to turn around and may or may not have the supplies needed while at the same time being in an area with much more radiation.

Not impossible of course, but I think we should do things in a certain order, and with a HUGE concentration on unmanned spaceflight and astronomy, because we've found over 200 extrasolar planets and any day now we'll discover another Earth (we've already discovered two potential other Earths in Gliese 581, though much larger). Once we've discovered another Earth we'll have all the interest we need in exploration. Here's how I think we should go about it, manned mission-wise:

1) Short mission to a near-Earth asteroid. Takes about a month or two.
2) Manned Venus flyby.
3) Colonization of either an asteroid, cloudtops of Venus, or Ceres.
4) Mars.

 

[Rhys]

There's already a prive spaceship called... Spaceship One. It won the X-Prize, was funded by Paul Allen and was purchased by Sir. Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines.

 

[Goldwater Conservative]

Notice how the government all but gave up on space after the Soviets couldn't keep up and we gave them the finger by landing on the moon. I'm a big space buff, but frankly I trust the private sector more to handle exploring the final frontier. Government only cares for it militarily.

And while I could shred that guy's laughable straw man argument, I'll simply say that anybody who thinks that being a paleoconservative/libertarian in the mold of Goldwater and Reagan somehow disqualifies you from being a Republican... is an idiot. Same goes for anybody asserting that libertarianism (by definition, those who oppose coercion and advocate maximum liberty, whatever the issue) is somehow not a consistent political philosophy, especially considering the "mainstream" alternatives of today.