To the Moon, Mars, and beyond...

Resend to fix the formatting :(

The Martian's and Bush administration would be
powerful allies if they were to agree to common
agenda. I see a sucession of objectives that all work
toward a common goal. Here is how I would unite the
'factions'. Each of my steps relies on the previous
and is easy to justify based on experience.

1) Send scientific robots to the moon to find water
and sites for mining.

Robots cost 1/100th as much as a manned mission and
you can leave behind microwave relay stations for
critical communication and control from earth. Cost: 1
Billion (think of what is happening on Mars)

2) Send more robots to moon to build the start of a
LSP system.

Control them from Earth leaning to deal with the 3
second delay in feedback.
- Build base infrastructure like a power grid.
- Build crude living facilities for later astronauts.
- Build distribution system for moving large amounts
of material around (take advantage of the surface).
- Build a large mass driver to fling material off of
the moon.

Cost: 10 Billion spread over x years? You can stop
funding at any point and nobody dies. At the end you
have a great amount of base facilities and resources
for any manned mission to the Moon by any nation
choosing to do it.

3) Do a manned mission to the moon.

Having a place to go with reliable power and food is
lot cheaper than bringing it all with you.
- Build up larger facilities & manufacturing
capacity. - Build space telescopes (worth a billion or
so)
- Lots of publicity back home.

Cost: A lot less than going there without a power
grid and facilities to grow food. Robots can build
multi acre areas for growing food per astronaut, etc
so the cost of resupply falls dramatically. I figure
10 billion this way?

4) Do a manned mission to Mars.

Use the Lunar mass driver to place 10,000 tons of
iron fabricated into a large habitat with artificial
gravity at L5.
- While you are there build another base that stays
as the foundation for SPS.
- Ship oxygen, hydrogen, and anything else useful
from the moon for propellants to get you to Mars.

Cost: Minimal since all of this is comming from the
moon and you already have the power and facilities.
You don't leave for Mars until you have enough room to
grow food for the trip - then you can take all of the
time you want. You know what it is like to live in a
confined space from your moon adventure.

5) Start full blown SPS development

Having the LSP on the moon and a proto base at L5
from the Mars mission you are set to work out all of
the intracacies of large scale SPS development. You do
not need a market for the power if you are leveraging
the resources acquired through previous missions.

Cost: Again as long as you don't have to go to earth
for equipment and astronauts the cost is very low.
Make everything as robotic and automated as possible.
You now have a decade or more of experience of how to
do this from LSP.

6) Start full blown High Frontier colonies.

With LSP and SPS, food production etc, it is time for
a big mission to the asteriod belt and large scale
colonies with an acre or more of space per person. If
you got this far then you can ship 10,000 tons of
material off of the moon per day making the mass
available to space structures really interesting.

Cost: This is far enough you that there may be
breakthoughs in all sorts of ways (for good or bad).

Summary:

Do this any other way (I concede that there may be
better ones) and it sure looks like a higher cost/risk
strategy. If the Martians see moon development as a
step toward their goal, then I would expect them to
support it. If they see it as a distraction then we
have an adversary and nobody is going to get what they
want.

Cheers, Thor

[mailto:acase@...

This means a major internal fight within the space
activist community. The Mars crowd is well organized
and passionate. Better to leave Mars as a long term
goal and work to increase support for the shorter term
goal of a return to the moon.

"I've done my share of fighting with the Martians,
but I'm forced to agree."

SPS development is quite a way down the line. Once
there's a presence on the moon we should lobby hard
for experiments in utilization of local resources. SSI
could probably even build small scale experiments for
astronauts to take with them.

"Wow, that's an exciting prospect. One which is
plausible in the presence of Bush's space plan, and
utterly implausible without it."

Regards, Mike Combs