First than all, take a look to this:
After watching this i wonder, Are we believers? Why is they dont
realize that better than spending a lot of money in going to Moon its
to send a cheaper mission to explore the L Points near Earth? Perhaps
the resources we need to settle in space are already there.
Why is they keep thinking in the development of Space as a planetary
thing after all this time, why we have been so unsuccesfull in teach
the people to understand that the future is in orbit?
You know? sometimes i feel like a crazy ufo preacher, shouting in the
middle of the nights "Read the high frontier" "read he holy book"
"believe in the only one prophet Gerard k. O'neill"
Are we believers or are they?
I now introduce Professor Smullyan, who will prove to you that either
he doesn't exist or you don't exist, but you won't know which.
Melvin Fitting
realize that better than spending a lot of money in going to Moon its
to send a cheaper mission to explore the L Points near Earth? I think a return to the moon is an excellent start. The lunar regolith is the space resource nearest the Earth and is the least speculative. I think a supportable argument can be made for placing a manned expedition to an NEO in between a return to the moon and the first manned trip to Mars. Perhaps
the resources we need to settle in space are already there. That was the subject of a doctorial dissertation, but I don't think any trapped material has ever been detected at either L-4 or L-5. Now mind you, I don't know exactly how closely we've looked. I wonder if the Hubble has ever been tasked with this? Why is they keep thinking in the development of Space as a planetary
thing after all this time, why we have been so unsuccesfull in teach
the people to understand that the future is in orbit?
You know? sometimes i feel like a crazy ufo preacher, shouting in the
middle of the nights "Read the high frontier" "read he holy book"
"believe in the only one prophet Gerard k. O'neill" I can certainly identify with your feelings on this matter. We do have to stay careful to keep our beliefs from becoming religious in the sense of closing our ears to contrary arguments. For example, right now I'm starting up an exchange with Dr. David Criswell who is insisting that Lunar Solar Power stations can undersell GEO SPS, even ones built from lunar resources as O'Neill recommended. Of course High Frontier thinking would emphasize that power plants operating continuously are twice as valuable as ones down for 2 weeks out of every 4. But I need to hear out Dr. Criswell's arguments. I may presently feel that he's proceeding from a certain kind of planetary chauvinism, and Imay not even expect that my mind will get changed on this issue, but if I don't hear out his arguments and consider them as fairly as I possibly can, then my beliefs on this matter have basically become my religion. Are we believers or are they? I still see my way clear to supposing that it's barely possible most people are proceeding from a bias they aren't much aware of, and that it frequently determines their starting assumptions. The planetary starting assumption is often unspoken, and for that reason, goesunquestioned. And we, by virtue of having read O'Neill's work, may have managed to shrug off that bias. Of course a critic would say we've merely exchanged one set of biases for a different set. To what extent we may be guilty of that, I think, is determined by how frequently we use logic in our arguments, instead of, "Well, every right-thinking person knows that..."
Mike Combs
Space is so full of good things - so much that's good and healthy for humanity - but this apple never falls.
http://www.cygo.com/
On 5/22/06, Vladimir Vasquez vladimir.vasquez@... wrote: First than all, take a look to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iIh3fghrZU&search=NASA
After watching this i wonder, Are we believers? Why is they dont
realize that better than spending a lot of money in going to Moon its
to send a cheaper mission to explore the L Points near Earth? Perhaps
the resources we need to settle in space are already there.
Why is they keep thinking in the development of Space as a planetary
thing after all this time, why we have been so unsuccesfull in teach
the people to understand that the future is in orbit?
You know? sometimes i feel like a crazy ufo preacher, shouting in the
middle of the nights "Read the high frontier" "read he holy book"
"believe in the only one prophet Gerard k. O'neill"
Are we believers or are they?
I now introduce Professor Smullyan, who will prove to you that either
he doesn't exist or you don't exist, but you won't know which.
Melvin Fitting
Mike:
240,000 miles away can compete with the beam spread
from a location 24,000 miles away. Are we so good
these days we would lose an insignificant amount of
energy from that lunar transmission site? Wow! We've
really learned a lot in only 30 years.
Sarcasm aside, I know the lunar idea has some serious
political power and it is probably an easier sell to
the purse string holders, but it is none the less
based on fear of falling,,,,at least, that's how I
percieve it. The idea of working in free fall may be
so counter intuitive to most people that they
instinctively grab on to the idea of having land to
stand upon.
"Must,,,have,,,ground,,,beneath feet,,,"
Well, evolution will eventually select for those
immune to such fear, but not until we're out
there,,,so go for the gusto. At least once we're
present on the lunar regolith, we're 90% there.
Gary 7
240,000 miles away can compete with the beam spread
from a location 24,000 miles away. Are we so good
these days we would lose an insignificant amount of
energy from that lunar transmission site? It's a solvable problem, but it requires a much bigger transmitting antenna. For phased array power-beaming systems, as the area of the transmitting antenna grows, the beam becomes more parallel. Between the beam spread problem, and the more complicated pointing issues, I'd consider the latter to be the more significant disadvantage for power beaming from aLPS. The idea of working in free fall may be
so counter intuitive to most people that they
instinctively grab on to the idea of having land to
stand upon. About a month ago I was having a debate with someone on sci.space.policy who was arguing forcefully that in the near-term we had to talk about industrialization of moon rather than HEO (or even an asteroid) because all of our current industrial processes assume presence of gravity, and it would be too expensive to come up with alternative methods of doing everything. I pointed out that a portion of an orbital facility could be set rotating. After over a week of discussion of rotating systems, he was right back to his original assertion: Industry had to start on the moon because there's no gravity in orbit.
Hmmm, the reptillian hind brain is still too large in
most people. Instinct over rules the prefrontal lobes
and I expect we're just gonna have to live with those
limitations until we can breed it out of the species,
which will still depend on having the mass/energy
resources to see us through the next 10 millenia or
so.
Gary 7