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Published online 6 February 2008 | Nature 451, 612-613 (2008) | doi:10.1038/451612a
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The Moon: destination or distraction?
NASA plans for manned spaceflight re-assessed.
A high-level meeting next week will offer scientists a chance to re-examine NASA's commitment to human exploration of the Moon. The 12 February workshop is organized by the Planetary Society, a space-exploration advocacy group based in Pasadena, California.
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The moon is the wrong destination as is using the Orion space program to replace the space shuttle program. Mars would be a much better place for colonization and exploration of the solar system. One technology unvieled would make the space shuttle a near light speed space ship. http://nlspropulsion.net I've seen NASA waste millions and millions on projects that didn't work more that 30 seconds with many years to build. The concept would of been found faulty by any senior hight school physics student. Spaace dollars are critical to man's success in space and if our current management gets its wrong at NASA then Americans will pay the price for falling behind in the space race. NASA needs to do better due diligence on programs they fund as once they are funded its like stopping a bullet train from its intended course. The moon offers so little for mankind other than helium-3 which can be mined at some later date from a Mars colony.
I think the Moon is first of all cheaper then Mars, can be accessed frequently and has a great potential for astronomical observations. It can be used as our backyard observatory given the levels of light pollution that are going to rise and affect major earth based observatories. The lack of an atmosphere provides an opportunity for observations outside the visible part of the spectrum.
Establishing permanently manned facilities on the surface of the moon and Mars are essential for America's scientific, strategic and space industrial future. Of course, developing an affordable and predominantly reusable space transportation infrastructure is also essential if both NASA, the military, and private industry are to have easy access to orbit and to the rest of the solar system. With its natural vacuum, extremely low gravity well, and abundant solar energy resources, the manufacturing and launching of satellites from the lunar surface and even the retrieval and repair of satellites on the moon could enable manned lunar facilities to dominate the satellite industry in the long run. However, this would require access to essential industrial chemicals such as hydrogen, carbon, and chlorine which could be shipped from Mars or from the asteroids, even from the surface of the planetoid, Ceres. However, the transportation infrastructure needed to achieve this would require:a heavy lift vehicle like the unfortunately decommissioned Saturn V, a reusable people shuttle like the DC-Y VTOVL that could have been run like an airliner and could have been fully funded for just 5 billion dollars. This vehicle could have also operated as a lunar and martian transport vehicle, an orbital liquid oxygen, and liquid hydrogen tankers to refuel space ships in orbit, a space manufactured light sail interplanetary transport that could transport space craft rapidly between lunar and martian orbit and transfer hydrogen and methane originally manufactured on from martian surface from martian orbit to lunar orbit.
We need to be able to live off the land and to do that in a sustaining subtenant way. There has to be some sort of infrastructure and resources off Earth and the safest closest place to learn what we need know to become self sustaining is the Moon! How can anyone possibly get past that?
If this invitation-only meeting is so "prestigious" and no a priori conclusions about the lunar aspect of the Vision for Space Exploration have been drawn, why is there not a single lunar scientist on the invitation list? Yet several figures noted for antipathy toward lunar exploration and resource use are given prominent positions to speak at the meeting.
"A stepping-off platform for further space exploration to Mars"; "A mining resource for minerals and rare elements,"; "A place to put radio telescopes"...etc., ...etc. All the above endeavours are worth pursuing -- granted -- however, has anyone ever given thought or word for returning to the Moon simply to study it for itself. Those of us who understand the Moon by simple observation of it through a telescope (small and large, amateur and professional) have found its geology and unique features (rock types, rilles, domes, moonquakes, crater types..etc.,) so much more interesting a reason to go back and try and understand the how and why our neasest natural satellite ever formed. During my experience of understanding the Moon (see one of the most detailed posters on it around www.moonposter.ie), I find that more and more are too busily concerned with understand other phenomena found in vast distances in the Universe that they're forgetting to understand what's close to us in our own backyard.