Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack, thereof) Forum: SSI-List
Thread: Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack, thereof)
# 14953 byrmenich@... on June 7, 2001, 8:48 a.m.
Member since 2022-08-22
"Possible inhabitants" on NEOs and Luna???? Oh please, spare me.
Please respond
to ssi_list
puttin on my blinders ,eyes focused on the target,the objective-the rape
and
pillage of NEOS ,Luna and what have you !With total disregard for the
possible inhabitants , wouldn't it be cheaper faster better to just club
baby seals ,cut down the old growth forests,and then spend a couple
o'months
celebrating in the Canadian Mars habitat simulation. love the dumdstupid
guy who values life your ours and theirs
>
> Fair.
>
> Still, I'd be quite willing to give up for the next twenty years all
> exploration of any objects other than Luna and NEOs. For the meantime,
> just forget about Mars, Europa, and Pluto. There will be plenty of
> opportunities to do research on other solar system objects once a 1000
> people are living in space and we can fill up our probe at the local
liquid
> oxygen gas station.
>
> The critical path research items that I think desparately need to be
> addressed in the near-term have nothing to do with Mars; nor with the
> long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body; nor with closed
> ecosystem research; nor with producing ball-bearings in free-fall; nor
> with the study of how rats, spiders, monkeys, or other animals and plants
> react to free-fall; nor with how deep the lunar mantle is; nor with the
> possibility of present or past life off the Earth.
>
> Rather, the research items that should be top priority are:
> * Finding, with high probability, all NEOs 100 meters or larger, and
> confirming in detail their orbits;
> * Assessing lunar polar ice, and possibilities for its extraction;
> * Assessment of other possible concentrated ore bodies and resources on
> Luna, such as volcanic vents, lava tubes with cold traps, etc.;
> * Detailed geologic, chemical, etc. characterization of a couple dozen
NEOs
>
> Not every research item associated with Luna and NEOs will be useful.
For
> example, we really don't need to know exactly how large the core of Luna
> is, we only need to know about the top 5 meters of regolith. If we find
> out how large the core of the Moon is while attempting to assess the top
> five meters of regolith, that's grand, but it shouldn't be the focus of
our
> investigation.
>
> We need to put on some serious blinders, and keep our eyes on the target
> and only on the target.
>
> Ron Menich
>
> hollroa@...
ssi_list@...
[ssi_list] Long-term planning (an unfortunate lack,
> Please respond to thereof)
> ssi_list
>
> >>>>I disagree strongly. The "long-term focus" --- or perhaps lack of
any
> reasonable focus --- is why NASA spends its dollars on the Space Station,
> on Mars, and on other activities that bear little relation to making
> near-term space industrialization using extraterrestrial resources
happen.
> Such space industrialization using extraterrestrial resources holds the
> promise of starting an entirely new sector of the economy that will
> eventually have an economic impact greater than that of the Internet.
The
> sooner this happens, the sooner the compounding effects of time and money
> will benefit us all. The longer we wait --- for example, by spending
our
> money on more Mars probes instead of searching for ice at the Lunar poles
> --- the longer those economic returns get pushed out into the future, and
> the lower their net present value becomes.>>>>
>
> Of course you are correct. NASA's disillusioned obsession with Mars
will
> actually postpone the date that we are actually able to achieve Mars
> colonisation,
> rather than speed it up. The O'Neill vision must come first. This is not
> to say
> that we should give no attention at all, to efforts that further our
> understanding
> of Mars. Nor would I be prepared to abandon projects that work towards
> Mars colonisation.
> Merely, I would assert, that the majority of our concentration should be
> focused upon
> the exploitation of the lunar and asteroidal resources. The use of these
> resources
> would allow us to build spacecraft that could ferry enormous numbers of
> colonists
> from LEO to the Martian surface. The idea of using Mars colonisation as
> one of the
> drivers behind space colonisation, is a good one. But it needs to be
> realised, that
> large scale colonisation of Mars, will require an enormous amount of
space