Hope this doesnt mean that any moon/mars plans are scrapped completely..

Raist said:
Works for me. We have no need to go back to the moon. Leave that for the Chinese -- they already have their moon base there on the back side where we can't see it anyway. Mars is the only way to go now!
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The moon program was to test the systems and technology far mars. No moon landing means no mars landing. I don't lnow who wrote that line. but if they are cancelling constellation they will have no systems to get to mars.

And yes there is a need for the moon. He3 for one.
 
AcidHell2 said:
A) there are loads of minerals and resources in are own solar system. So we do not need to go to other solar systems yet
B) Moon has He3 on
C) moon is a test platform for landing on mars
D) mars again has resources on and is inhabitable and can be colonised.
e) loads of useful technology comes out of space missions.
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Loads of resources yeah, also the stuff we learn from becoming sustainable on the moon and later mars will be greatly important both for our survival in space and here on earth, also having outposts of our best people with advanced technology is incredibly good for the chances of humanity surviving any major disaster here on earth, i would rather have us spread out to a few locations than keeping all our eggs in one basket here on earth.
 
Efour2 said:
The way we are right now financially putting things this on hold for 20 years isn't such as bad idea.
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Agreed.

I do see the point that a lot of technology filters away from space exploration and into other areas.

We've already been to the moon, there are just more pressing issues on our own planet to deal with first.
 
In 1970 the year i was born the world population was 3.7 billion, currently the world population is about 6.8 billion. If we dont make some moves in getting the human race established somewhere other than earth we might not get a chance later.

Personally i think the chinese will just get on with the job and colonise the moon and mars.
 
doofski said:
Personally i think the chinese will just get on with the job and colonise the moon....
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Dude, they already have I tell ya. We just can't see them because they're on the far side! The gov't won't tell us that's the real reason they're cancelling the missions.

1) They don't want the public to know what the Chinese have.
2) They don't want to cause any fuss up there... yet.
3) They'll wait until the Chinese have the base fully established and self-sustaining, then take over with brute force!

In the meantime, play it down and pretend we don't notice 'em up there. :)
 
AcidHell2 said:
And yes there is a need for the moon. He3 for one.
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Why? Helium-3 is for nuclear fusion. If we had an economical nuclear fusion reactor that used He3, it might be worth getting larger quantities of He3, but we don't. It would also be necessary to process billions of tonnes of moon rock per year, and we're nowhere near being able to do that. A moon landing for He3 mining is very premature at the moment.
 
Angilion said:
Why? Helium-3 is for nuclear fusion. If we had an economical nuclear fusion reactor that used He3, it might be worth getting larger quantities of He3, but we don't. It would also be necessary to process billions of tonnes of moon rock per year, and we're nowhere near being able to do that. A moon landing for He3 mining is very premature at the moment.
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It's not just helium-3, we need other forms of helium too. Besides, we can't advance our fusion research without the raw materials needed for reactors!
 
doofski said:
In 1970 the year i was born the world population was 3.7 billion, currently the world population is about 6.8 billion. If we dont make some moves in getting the human race established somewhere other than earth we might not get a chance later.

Personally i think the chinese will just get on with the job and colonise the moon and mars.
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The idea that colonisation can reduce population pressure is silly, so that argument fails. So what if we can get a couple of thousand people into a colony on the moon or Mars?

The only way colonisation would affect population is if we had interstellar instantaneous mass transit systems through which hundreds of thousands of people per day could travel to inhabitable planets...and even if we had that, how could colonies be established and grown so quickly on other planets?
 
Will be interesting to see how opening up the 'space transport' market to the commercial sector will affect things - maybe even speed up the production of a new launch and re-entry vehicle for manned moon missions or the like?

NASA will no doubt fund the projects it sees as offering the best possible returns and that should hopefully lead to more money they can spend elsewhere like on keeping the ISS going past 2015 and even beyond 2020 :)
 
Energize said:
It's not just helium-3, we need other forms of helium too. Besides, we can't advance our fusion research without the raw materials needed for reactors!
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We have Helium-3 for research. We don't have enough for a power station. Since we don't have the power station either, we don't need the Helium-3 for it.

What other forms of Helium do we (a) need badly enough to make it viable to get from the moon and (b) don't have enough of?

If anyone makes a viable fusion reactor that uses Helium-3 as a fuel, then it might be worthwhile hauling it from the moon. Or maybe not, giving how spectacularly rare it is on the moon even if the most optimistic figure are right. An example - the most optimistic figures result in it being necessary to mine and process 1.2 billion tonnes of lunar rock per year for the UK alone. That's one hell of a mining facility to get built on the moon.
 
Angilion said:
The idea that colonisation can reduce population pressure is silly, so that argument fails. So what if we can get a couple of thousand people into a colony on the moon or Mars?

The only way colonisation would affect population is if we had interstellar instantaneous mass transit systems through which hundreds of thousands of people per day could travel to inhabitable planets...and even if we had that, how could colonies be established and grown so quickly on other planets?
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I wasnt suggesting that we use colonisation to reduce population, i was suggesting if we dont make a start at getting to mars, we might not have the resources further down the line. Due to the increasing population of the planet and their drain on the resources we have.

If we have a couple thousand people on mars and earth gets hit with an extinction event. Thats the human race down to 2000 instead of 0.
 
I havent read every post or googled it because im far to lazy. But does anyone know if the russia's still plan on going to the moon. I remember reading a while back that they wanted to but the best rocket they had could only lift about a 1/3 of what the nasa was developing. So the mission would have been done on a lower budget and wouldnt have been able to do as much if at all.
 
Energize said:
We aren't going to build the power station unless we have helium 3 first though.
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We have Helium-3 now. What we don't have is any fusion reactor that generates more energy than it uses, or one that can sustain fusion.

Setting up an immense lunar mining facility to provide fuel for a theoretical power station when you don't even have a design for the power station isn't a good idea even if it could be done, and it can't.
 
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