[url]http://www.msnbc.com/news/922347.asp?0cl=cR[/url]


NASA has taken the first tentative steps in rekindling agency interest in the moon. As part of its New Frontiers spacecraft plans, NASA has requested proposals for a South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin Sample Return project.

PAST ROBOTIC SPACECRAFT orbiting the moon have spotted what appear to be super-cold stashes of water ice. These reservoirs are seemingly tucked away in craters, hidden from the sun’s thawing rays. The moon’s south pole is thought by many scientists to be loaded with tons of water ice. If available, this treasure trove resource could help support return-to-the-moon expeditions.
      To do so, processing machines would convert the water ice into oxygen, drinkable water, and rocket fuel. By churning out these products, living off the moon might more easily become a way of life for future explorers.
      SPA is the largest, oldest preserved lunar basin. Debris ejected from the feature when it was created, as well as the basin’s rim, contains material from the lower crust and possibly the upper mantle of the moon.

Snagging compositionally unique samples from there should yield insight into the very early history of the Earth-moon system.
      If given a go-ahead, a sample return craft may be hurled moonward before decade’s end. It is a journey that only takes three days, unlike the six month, one-way missions to Mars that NASA is currently preparing for launch.
      That mission could well set the stage for a more aggressive reconnection with Earth’s moon, first using advanced robots, followed by humans that go the lunar distance.
     
SHADOWY PAST
      Taking a hard look at prospective landing sites at the lunar south pole is Philip Stooke, a space scientist at the Departments of Geography and Physics and Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, Canada.
      “The lunar south pole is interesting for its proximity to the south pole-Aitken basin and the potential for volatile materials — including water — in perpetually shaded areas,” Stooke said. Finding that water would help bolster the prospects for future human settlement of the moon, he said.


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[img]http://a799.g.akamai.net/3/799/388/35fda26e294b75/www.msnbc.com/news/1921460.jpg[/img]

so. we can barely get out of the atmosphere and when we come back we get burned to a crisp. hrmmm, is a moon landing aiming a bit high?

how about we make sure that the astronauts dont incnerate on reentry FIRST!

there is a novel thought!

who cares what un-maned missions you want to do, as long as you are still going to send up astronauts to fix telescopes and satellites, humans should be the first and foremost priority.

The Chinese are making a lot of noise (and backing it up with $$$) about going to the Moon with the intention of setting up a base.

Nothing like a good old fashioned "us against them" race to get NASA and congress off its ass and get us back in the game.

We had an entire infrastructure setup for lunar missions and we THREW IT AWAY!!!  Hell, we started dismantling it after Apollo 11.  By the time 17 returned we had no real capacity to go again.  18 through 20 hardware was routed to Skylab and 21 (the last rescue vehicle for Skylab 3) was used for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.  The rest of the hardware ended up in museums, the last 2 Saturn V stacks ended up on display at JSC and KSC.

Talk about unspeakable shortsightedness!  It was like Columbus getting back from the New World, saying “been there, done that” and proceeding to burn his ships, destroy the shipyards, maps and logs so the next ones to go would have to get start from near square one.

[img]http://flymeaway.net/images/Spliced%20Saturn%20V.JPG[/img]

The space program should ONLY be about colonizing space.  Screw all the goldfish studies and the rest of it.  Will people die in space? Yes, get over it.  Don't be a pussy.  Its the price of glory.

I'd go up.  Just give me a ticket.  But not aboard that POS shuttle.  It was a stupid idea in the first place to use that thing for any mission other than the repair of certain items in space.  Other than that it's obsolete.

Perhaps because the entire goal was to simply beat the Russians? Look at the thousands of scientists NASA and JPL fired after the mission? I remember as a kid, around 1969-1970, astrophysicists were pumping gas.

MOON? What Moon ? We have a moon ? [shock]

Return to the moon?  That would mean that NASA actually put a man on the moon.  

Its bullshit.  Man has [b]NEVER[/b] set foot on the moon.

[b][url]http://batesmotel.8m.com/[/url][/b]

oohh I want to go,, can I go pleaseee, pick me I want to go oh oh oh please let me go I'll go I can go pick me.

Our first mistake was giving up the saturn 5. It has a per flight cost less then that of the shuttle with three times the launch capacity. Second mistake was letting Sky Lab A renter and giving sky lab B to the smithsonian. If we would have launch 4 sky lab sized peices on heavy lift expendables we could have had a space station with a larger internal volume then the ISS in less the a year. The ISS is being built like it is so that the space shuttle has a place to go, and the space shuttle is kept alive to go to the space station...see the lovely logic NASA now uses.

We should go to Mars next, not the moon. Unlike the Monn Mars is a much beter canidate for colonization with more redily avalible and easily acessable volitals. Also Mars's (realativly) thick atmosphere provides a great deal of radiation sheilding on the surface. From a delta-v requirment stand point it's no harder to get to Mars then to the moon. From a technology stand point we are more ready to go to Mars now then we were to go to the moon in 1961.

If we develop space nuclear power and rebuild our heavy launch capacity we could have a permanat base on Mars by the 2017 launch window for the money currently in the NASA budget.

We need:

A real, useable orbital space station

A permanently manned base on the moon

To explore and colonize the solar system

The future for the human race is [i]out there[/i].  The space, raw materials and energy needed to exploit them are [i]out there[/i].

I am in agony over the fact that, if it's going to be done, it will be done by some goddamned totalitarian government because that's the only way to get the money necessary for the initial investment.

We ought to be living on the moon NOW!

Instead, we sit here and build a welfare [s]state[/s] world.

like we don't have enough cheese down here as it is? [}:D]

Base on the moon, launch lighter craft from it's surface powered by the liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen generated from lunar ice beds, and have an established colony.

Last year there was a request for volunteers from the NASA to the astronaught and pilot pool for a 48 hour constant 2g centrifuge experiment. Anybody wanna guess what you would do that for?

I guess the thousands of scientists who studied the hundreds (thousands?) of pounds of returned moon rocks must have been in on the conspiracy too.  [rolleyes]

Can you say ... PUBLICITY STUNT


say it with me children...

t

i think we need a base with a "rock chucker"

like in "the moon is a harsh mistress"

I can only hope that you are being facetious.  I would hate to think it was possible that anyone was truly that ignorant and stupid.

The moon's a really great place to launch missiles from.

We could have some really long range shooting competitions on the moon.

An interesting though was brought up by the last man to set foot upon the moon:

We were in such a hurry to make it to the moon, that we sidestepped the infrastructure that we would need for longer travels (Mars) and longer stays and simply went straight for the moon.  No foreplay (my take).  Everything was devoted to that sole objective, at the expense of longer term ventures.  When it was over, regardless of our ability (at that time) to make repeated moon trips, we were nowhere near ready for mars.

Without the space (moon) race, we might have had a permanent space station (waypoint) for the past 30 years.  That space station would have been the launching pad for a Mars mission, or more.  As such, we might have had men on Mars by now.

Not complaining about the path we took, but it's interesting to see how geopolitical events can drive things much bigger than the events themselves.

Not to take this thread too far off course...

I really would love to see (in person) something like the Saturn V launch.  As impressive as I'm sure shuttle launches are...the Saturn launches had to be spectacular.

And now back on track...
We will have to go back to the moon with manned missions before we even think of going to Mars.  
We learned to crawl, then to walk, and then we sat on our butts on the couch for 30 years.  All the experience is gone.  We've got to learn how to walk again (and that means going to the moon) before any manned mission to Mars is possible.

Correct. We have never put a man on the moon.

... Surely you jest, you knuckleheads. Americans have been to the moon and back. You younguns are just full of consiracy theories.

So we fooled the Soviets, but not some idiot with a free website?

I, for one, feel that LEO micro-gravity experiments have peak long ago. Too many uG scientists have a lock on NASA though.

Many people think that the moon is some how a stepping stone to Mars. It really isn't. Say we were going to use the moon as a staging ground for an expedition to Mars, and for sake of argument let's say that there are tanks of liquid hydrogen and oxygen waiting for use on the moon (there aren't) it still wouldn't make sense to go there to get them because you add to your propolsion requirement the delta-v to send yourself into tli, land on the moon, take off from the moon and launch yourself into trans-mars interjection. You can't even make the argument that the moon would be a good training ground for Mars, Antartica or the Canadian Artic is actually a closer analog. Our best bet is to develop a heavy lift expendable either by using the shuttle stack with a pod of ssmes and cargo in place of the orbiter, a revived russian Energya (the largest launch vehicle ever made), or a revived and updated Saturn V to launch a Mars mission in two or three launches using nuclear thermal rockets, or nuclear electric rockets developed under project prometheus as an upper stage. If anyone would like a more technical break down of the mass and speed requirements or anything else feel free to IM me.

I know it is not cost effective, how 'bout a penal colony on the moon.I can see this possible scenario-

Prison inmate No.1-"Dude, I can't take it anymore, I'm busting outta this cage tonite"

Prison inmate No.2-" [LOL] "

Prison inmate No.1-"What's so funny"

Prison inmate No.2-"You idiot, ya been here so long, ya forgot we on the MOON !"

Prison inmate No.1- [shock]

I hate to be the one to rain on everyone's parade, but [b]We no longer have the technology for a trip to the moon.[/b]

No, I'm not being stupid.
Let Me simply echo what people like the late Carl Seagan have said before.

We can not use the shuttle, It's a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) craft, It can't go fast enough to reach into the higher orbit for lunar insertion.

There are no plans (Left, if there ever were any) for the saturn 5, most if not all of the people who built them are dead, the companies gone or merged. The Russians may or may not have a heavy lifter that could do the job, but I'm betting we wouldn't base another program on what the Russians could provide.

The lead time to develop such a program is 10+ years.

Let's face it, We screwed Ourselves! Like the others above have said, We (For now) are stuck here.

Tall Shadow

Sorry, I guess I wasn't very clear in my point about returning to the moon.
I wasn't talking about using the moon as a launch point for Mars, but rather a stepping stone to test new technology before we try it out on an extended mission.  
I'm not a scientist (could ya tell? [:E] ), but I think that we need to get more experience in space outside of near-earth orbit before we attempt a Mars mission.

We didn't fool the Soviets.  We fooled them on the world stage.  It would make the Soviets look like bad sports to stand up and accuse us of cheating.

The reason we cheated is because the Soviets did it first.  I saw a show on the history channel.  There was a international competiton for putting the first man into space and returning him back to earth in the lauch capsule.  The Soviets had their cosmonauts parachute out.

You guys can call me a nut all you want. Fox Channel did a full hour show about faking the moon landing a few years ago.

I hope you are kidding.


This is one of the most absurd things I have heard in quite a while.  Congratulations.


So let me get this straight:  you saw some show on tv about how the landing could have been faked, therefore it was faked.  Great reasoning.  [:E]




Again, I ask one of you conspiracy theorists to answer this:  were the thousands of geologists who studied the hundreds or thousands of pounds of returned moon rock part of the conspiracy?

It's amazing that some people believe that an alleged hoax of such magnitude and with so much evidence to examine, could hold up to scrutiny under todays technology. Something like this would've been picked apart by professionals long ago not some yoyo trying to sell a book or start some braindead conspiracy cult on his website. Still I guess I pity da fools.[V]

Want to have a mission to Mars?

Put some people on the Moon for 6 months to a year at a time. This would be used as a training thing to teach people how to operate on their own without immediate (a few days/weeks) aid from mother earth.  It will also teach us what is needed to do it.

Want to put people on the moon for 6 Months?

Get a vehicle that can make it to the moon repeatedly.  A refuelable vehicle that goes from earth orbit to lunar orbit would be ideal, have it be refueled and have cargo loaded at a Station in earth Orbit.

That would of course require that we get a real station up (and make its orbit a bit higher than what we have now), and get a vehicle capable of maintaining it without problems.

Right now we cant even get to the Space station without the 60's tech from the Russians.  

We need to get 21st century tech going towards space, not keep using this silly 70's era shit we are now.

So in my semi-informed non professional out of my ass opinion we would need at least 3 vehicle types, one which handles the work from earth to earth orbit, then another that handles earth orbit to lunar orbit.  The 3rd one would handle Earth Orbit to Martian Orbit/surface.

Once you get the station up in orbit you can start using it to build/assemble in orbit a series of vehicles to go to Mars.  Going to Mars Apollo fashion isnt really feasable, need to do it in a series of steps not one big one. First ones (unmanned) to set up everything in orbit and on the surface, and one to get the 'return vehicle' to Martian orbit. Then the actual crew from Earth Orbit to Mars.

Actually, Tallshadow, the tooling for the Saturn is being used everyday still and has even been modernized for current production technology. It is even being further upgraded for friction stir welding as we speak. The space shuttle external fuel tank is built on this tooling and I operated it for three + years up until 1999. My friends still use it.

The software and engines could be modernized to make that old rocket a viable candidate even today. With the discovery of ice on the moon, your fuel problem might be solved also.

Hey it could happen.

I guess that MUST make it true.  And yes, you're still an idiot.  And a lazy one at that, given how little effort it would take for you to find out the facts.

This, from the same channel that brought us "[b]Alien Autopsy[/b]".....

The Russians would have LOVED to accuse us of trying to fool the world. If they could have proved it back then, they would have. Hell, they would still love to prove us wrong if they could. Special affects being what they were back around '69....there is no way for it to be anything BUT real.