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  #11  
Old 08-19-2009, 10:56 AM
Jeff Walther Jeff Walther is offline
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Originally Posted by mycrofte
Partially to make sure we can steer Near Earth objects and, mostly, to send a few to Mars. A few well placed comets and bingo, instant atmosphere!


I've always like the proposal I read somewhere or other. Shift Mars and Venus to lead or follow Earth by 60 degrees and then smash them (Mars and Venus, not Earth) together, gently.
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  #12  
Old 08-19-2009, 02:09 PM
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Default The answer is RoMax SHX

I could get us into orbit and back...
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  #13  
Old 08-19-2009, 02:49 PM
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luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Well, I read a LOT of history, especially NASA related history, and it's REALLY frustrating that they just can't seem to get their act together anymore.

Zubrin pointed out in his "The Case for Mars" book how in discussions with a NASA manager the manager outlined their 20+ year plan to conduct microgravity research in support of a Mars mission. Zubrin replied "why not just do the mission in simulated (centrifugal) gravity by spinning the tethered EDS stage and hab module?" The manager replied, "can't do that or we'd lose our microgravity program".

It's a lot like health care. My Dad became disabled, started having more and more health problems, losing feeling in his hands, feet, and legs, losing strength in his arms, chronic pain, and that sort of thing. He started going to doctors and they started testing him for everything under the sun. He started reading about post-polio syndrome, because in 48 at age 2 he got polio and couldn't walk for a year and was on metal leg braces until junior high and all that-- he got experimental sulfa treatments and stuff at Warm Springs and it burned his blood up; he's always had to take iron to prevent anemia. At least he recovered from it and led a normal life, but as the polio generation before the Salk and Sabin vaccines (primarily baby-boomers) are hitting retirement age and old age, childhood polio victims are increasingly suffering from a general health deterioration related to their childhood polio damage. Dad suggested to doctor after doctor, "maybe it's post-polio syndrome, can you test for that?" The doctors pat him on the head and go, "nah, that isn't even a REAL disease" and "couldn't be that, must be something else". After nearly 5 years of test after test after test after test, they finally send him to a neurologist in Houston. I took him into the medical complexes and got him there, and settled in with a book expecting a 4 hour wait or thereabouts. After 15 minutes he comes out and says "let's go" and on the way back to the garage he tells me what happened-- the doctor ran needle-like electrodes into his muscles and energized them electrically while hooked up to a monitoring machine and had him move his arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. and after a quick check of the readings told him, "well, you have post-polio syndrome-- there's nothing we can do about it and nothing we can treat it with, and it'll eventually kill you, so just go on home and live as well as you can."

Now they COULD have done this dinky test FIVE YEARS AGO and known in fifteen minutes whether that's what it was or not. BUT, IF the doctors HAD done that test five years ago, they couldn't have billed his union insurance for literally HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of pointless tests when the first test established the diagnosis. SO, to play out the insurance, they piddle about for five years milking that money cow (insurance) for all they can get.

NASA is much the same way. That's why SEI turned out like it did-- EVERYBODY'S pet project was on the critical path to success and therefore DEMANDED full funding of a DDT&E program for the plan to work. Therefore it ends up costing $450 billion dollars. Now they're doing it all over again.

I like human spaceflight, but it's really become a wasteful sham. The Hubble missions at least achieved something, though many say it'd be cheaper to launch a new telescope than repair the old one because shuttle flights and operations and training to do it are SO expensive. The ISS is just about as boring as watching paint dry-- they are literally doing almost NOTHING up there that hasn't been done on Salyut's and Mir since 1971-- the year I was born for pity's sake! That's basically the underlying reason the CAIB recommended going back to exploration, because doing laps in LEO doing the same experiments we've been doing for nearly 40 years frankly isn't worth the expense and dangers involved.

IMHO, if we can't afford to do exploration with human spaceflight, I'd just as soon see it basically gutted or abandoned altogether and see that funding go to robotic exploration. The Mars Rovers, Cassini-Huygens, Magellan, Galileo, Sojourner, and Hubble have DRAMATICALLY increased our knowledge and understanding of the solar system and the universe. New Horizons, Deep Space One, Deep Impact, and others have blazed the trails to new and exciting technologies and possibilities for robotic deep space exploration, free of the constraints of radiation exposure, providing food, water, breathable air, waste extraction, and temperature control to keep humans alive, and provide them with not only living space and instrumentation but a safe return capability as well, yet several of these programs were nearly cut and their knowledge return never realized due to budget cuts to support meaningless repetitive experiments conducted by humans in low Earth orbit. JIMO has already been felled by the human spaceflight axe, and the science missions directorate at NASA gutted to pay for the bloated, inefficient, and rediculously expensive Ares/Constellation program.

For what?? Empty talk about moon bases and manned Mars landings?? For pity's sake, we haven't even done the research necessary to know where the best place to land is for crying out loud! Guesstimates of what "may" be obtainable water resources at the lunar south pole, etc. haven't been confirmed by robotic probes on the ground, so why bother sending humans there to find out-- there may be FAR more interesting places worthy of human exploration that could get passed over to send a mission to either confirm or deny the existance of a particular resource, which could have been done by a simple robotic lander... the moon should be literally crawling with robotic rovers, and Mars should have a lot more, and a sample-return mission, before we even CONTEMPLATE sending a human crew there, at least for anything more than 'flags and footprints'. Flags and Footprints missions are of course more prestige than any deep meaningful science return.

Someone mentioned 'baby steps' in the shuttle and ISS-- that's true, to an extent, but how many babies crawl FOR FORTY YEARS?? Give me a break! Once upon a time, NASA knew how to 'make do' with what was available, and do ABSOLUTELY FREAKIN' AMAZING stuff with it-- I mean, come on, they used a battlefield ballistic missile and two types of ICBM's to put the first American in space, orbit crews, and learn all the spacefaring skills necessary to go to the moon. But nowdays, the only prevailing logic NASA is capable of putting out there is "we can't turn the shuttle stack into a heavy lift space launcher without totally scrapping it and spending 36 billion dollars to basically totally reinvent the wheel... and we CANNOT use existing EELV rockets to orbit humans, even though they are WAY more powerful, safe, and capable than the ICBM's we used for Mercury and Gemini." It smacks to me of kids who demand their parents give them a new car, the keys to the candystore, a handful of credit cards, a box of comdoms, pat them on the head, and tell them to 'go have fun'. Sorry but real life doesn't work this way.

It's just SO sad to think that the greatest days in this country's history all occurred before I was even born... SAD!

JMHO! OL JR
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  #14  
Old 08-19-2009, 02:50 PM
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Shreadvector Shreadvector is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Walther
I've always like the proposal I read somewhere or other. Shift Mars and Venus to lead or follow Earth by 60 degrees and then smash them (Mars and Venus, not Earth) together, gently.


Don't put "The Girls" in charge of that engineering project.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time
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  #15  
Old 08-19-2009, 05:36 PM
Jeff Walther Jeff Walther is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Shreadvector
Don't put "The Girls" in charge of that engineering project.....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_World_Out_of_Time



That's always been a favorite of mine. I sometimes wish Niven had written additional stories in that universe and other times I'm glad he left it as is.

But it's a very richly drawn universe. There should be room for a lot more stories in there.
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  #16  
Old 08-19-2009, 06:48 PM
stefanj stefanj is offline
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By the time we can shift planets around the whole concept of living on their surfaces will seem quaint.

I mean, dang, the vast amount of the mass is wasted on unusable core and mantle.

Better to bust the suckers up and use them to make deep-space habitats and big-ass solar collectors.

This was what Freeman Dyson actually had in mind when he was speculating about Spheres; he got the idea from Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men.
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  #17  
Old 08-19-2009, 09:35 PM
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GregGleason GregGleason is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by luke strawwalker

My Dad became disabled ... there's nothing we can do about it and nothing we can treat it with ...



Jeff,

I am so very sorry to hear that about your dad.



Greg
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  #18  
Old 08-20-2009, 12:33 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by shrox
I could get us into orbit and back...


I am serious, I think my RoMax could work.
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  #19  
Old 08-20-2009, 11:22 AM
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luke strawwalker luke strawwalker is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GregGleason
Jeff,

I am so very sorry to hear that about your dad.



Greg


Thanks Greg... I appreciate it.

Of course his just 'giving up' and ballooning to 450 pounds + certainly doesn't help anything. The worst part is that he's on like 20-30 different meds a day and usually doesn't make much sense... pills do weird stuff to your brain.

Course I'm the type that won't go to a doctor unless I'm carried in feet-first...

Shrox, talk to Elon over at Space X... He's always looking for the "better idea"... your mega-rotorocket is cool!

I dunno about this whole "leave it to newspace" premise that the Augustine Commission seems so enamored with... wasn't X-33 'signed over' to private industry to develop the shuttle replacement as Venturestar, and it all came to naught?? If developing manned space systems were really that easy, I'm sure one of the 'big boys' would've done it by now. Seems to me that just leaving LEO crew ops to the private sector is kinda like driving your ducks over a hill hoping there's a pond on the other side... If there's not, you're going to end up in deep trouble!

I have ENORMOUS respect and admiration for Space X and Bigelow and the other newspace companies, but the practical side of me wants to see CONSISTENT RESULTS before putting all the eggs in that basket. Space X has achieved orbit, and that's a momentous achievement for a completely private endeavour, but orbiting and recovering a manned system is an order of magnitude harder. There were a LOT of failures and problems between Sputnik and Explorer I, and Gagarin and Shepard and Glenn.

I'm not entirely convinced of the economics of it either, and economics WILL be firmly in the driver's seat for private manned spaceflight.

Personally I think NASA should have to use a modified system of procurement like the military does-- issue requirements, put out for RFP's, and then analyze what the contractor's come up with on merits/advantages/disadvantages/risks and then issue the contract and let the contractor's deliver their system to NASA for use. It would be too expensive to develop competing demonstrator systems like the military does, but a sufficiently in-depth analysis should be able to correctly assess the risks/rewards of a given proposal... one would think, anyway, if undue outside pressure or bias could be eliminated anyway.

Oh well, same argument different day and NASA isn't interested in efficiency or actually achieving anything-- it's become the WPA of the 21st century...

Thing was, at least WPA provided us with the National and State Parks as a by-product of their jobs program-- NASA isn't even really delivering that much anymore...

OL JR
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