There are no levels where the cancellation of Gateway - in favor of jibbering fantasies about a near term, surface “moonbase” - is not an utter betrayal of science, reason, NASA and the nation and humanity.
ALL of the science advisory panels preferred Gateway orbital station, for a dozen reasons (see below). But the absurd nothion of putting modules designed for a zero-gee station down onto the lunar surface... are you freaking kidding me? Even if it would work (and it can't), have you a plan HOW to do that?
Have ANY of you actually swallowed that?
I had hopes that Isaacman would turn out like Bridenstine... an anomalously (even uniquely) excellent appointment by Donald Trump. Instead, he is pushing the Artemis/'lunarbase' moondoggle plot to destroy all sensible US efforts in space.
Again. And again. Land Gateway modules on the lunar surface? What dopes would ever fall for that?
Sigh: let me explain. Gateway was what every panel advised. It could:
(1) Continue developing the modular methods needed for better stations and Mars missions and (yes) later lunar bases.
(2) It would enable local control of ROBOTIC lunar explorers going down to dozens of sites below. (FIFTY small robot prospectors would accomplish vastly more than ONE silly footprint Artemis stunt, including finding the best later site for a base. (And yes, robots can also plant little flags. Say at lava tubes near the ice.)
(3) Some robots could easily send samples back up to Gateway for analyisis. And again, samples FROM MANY SITES allowing us to actually find the best one.
(4) The same labs could analyze robotic-acquired ASTEROID SAMPLES. And asteroids are where the riches are! (Which of course is why the Trumpists have sabotaged all asteroid missions and don’t want Gateway.)
(5) If any of you jabber idiot incantations about “lunar resources”... like titanium or ‘Helium three’... go to the nearest mirror and SMACK yourself silly! Until you decide to snap out of the snake oil sales pitches.
Yes, there may be some ice near the poles. So? That’s just the beginning of what we should be exploring robotically, in case there might be (maybe) be something more than just ice.
(6) There are HUGE benefits of Gateway for enhanced national defense that I won’t get into here. But the potential security benefits are enormous and none of them would arise from a hardscrabble 'base' on the surface… and that's one more reason the Trumpists canceled it, of course.
(7) A unique idea. Gateway would be the perfect lunar-orbit HOTEL! For uber-lord oligarch tourists who more than pay their way.
And a docking port/base for landers that WE could provide and rent out to every nation and trillionaire who wants to have their 'yeehaw lookit-me!' rite of passage on that dusty plain, celebrating their Bar Moonzvahs there.
We could even stash a lander and say “Welcome to our Moon, have fun down there kids. And here’s your backup rescue vehicle.”
Again, I do hope to live to see city lights on the moon.
BUT IT IS NOT OUR NEXT STEP! AND CERTAINLY NOT AMERICA’S.
We have vastly better things to do.
And that is exactly why oligarchs are trying to prevent those better things.
There are two scenarios
ReplyDelete(1) (the sensible one) we do NOT have anything on the lunar surface
(2) we have a lunar base
If we go for a lunar base THEN the Lunar Gateway would be useful
If we don't go for a lunar base then the Lunar Gateway becomes much much less useful than something in earth orbit - which could perform all of the functions mentioned for a fraction of the cost
Gateway could expand to be a refueling station as well, using surface mined resources (if found in sufficient quantities. Then Elon can be fueled and keep right on going (hopefully forever)...
ReplyDeleteThe moon has hydrogen and oxygen, but lacks carbon so methane (CH4) fuel is not possible.
DeleteHowever it has lots of silicon to make silane fuel (SiH4). More powerful and volatile than methane, silane combusts in the mere presence of oxygen.
Duncan you ignore # 1, 3, 4, 6, 7.
ReplyDeleteShayhura, if the moon has copious ice AND if we get to a point we can mine/refine and split it into H & O2... it does Elon only a bit of good for Oxidizer because his fuel is methane.
The oxidiser is 80% of the fuel mass - so if you have a supply of oxygen then you only need 20% of the fuel
DeleteOnly a "bit of good" is 80%! probably worth having
If that paper about getting the Oxygen from the regolyth is correct then we may not even have to find ice
I meant # 2, 3, 4, 6, 7.
ReplyDelete(2) It would enable local control of ROBOTIC lunar explorers going down to dozens of sites below. (FIFTY small robot prospectors would accomplish vastly more than ONE silly footprint Artemis stunt, including finding the best later site for a base. (And yes, robots can also plant little flags. Say at lava tubes near the ice.)
DeleteLunar orbit would be better than earth orbit for the controler - but not that much better
(3) Some robots could easily send samples back up to Gateway for analyisis. And again, samples FROM MANY SITES allowing us to actually find the best one.
Gateway would be closer (energetically) than Earth orbit - but not that much closer
(4) The same labs could analyze robotic-acquired ASTEROID SAMPLES. And asteroids are where the riches are! (Which of course is why the Trumpists have sabotaged all asteroid missions and don’t want Gateway.)
The Gateway would NOT be more accesable than if it was in earth orbit
be something more than just ice.
(6) There are HUGE benefits of Gateway for enhanced national defense that I won’t get into here. But the potential security benefits are enormous and none of them would arise from a hardscrabble 'base' on the surface… and that's one more reason the Trumpists canceled it, of course.
Earth orbit would be better
(7) A unique idea. Gateway would be the perfect lunar-orbit HOTEL! For uber-lord oligarch tourists who more than pay their way.
Earth orbit would be better
Duncan wrong re #2 and #3 though it's a tradeoff with the costs of maintainung Gateway, which are worth it for doing a reachable reach beyond LEO.
ReplyDelete4 is not just better energetically but lets you have a safe lab where nothing can accidentally enter Earth atmosphere.
#6 dead wrong. Defense assets would be safe BECAUSE they are far away and not vilnerable to someone blowing up LEO/
#7 two entirely different things. the LEO hotel is for mere billionaires. Gateway hotel sucks funds from trillionaires.
The only real disagreement is if the extra "benefits" are worth the extra "costs"
DeleteOverall sure, that is the point. But if we use gateway as a 'reach' and run into problems we still have Gateway and can add or modify. It can even be moved or made part of a Mars ship. A moon'base' that fails is just a giant pile of junk in the middle of a wasteland of poison dust.
DeleteWill we become a species of Homesteaders, or of Spacers?
Deletescidata,
DeleteBoth. There is no way one alone will work.
In the previous thread, I noticed your response to the first phrase of a comment by Locumranch.
ReplyDeleteMy own thoughts exactly, and it's curiously refreshing when you can think 'yep, I can completely disregard anything this poster writes'.
In 2034, the leaders of what was left of the United Nations - India, Japan, Europe, the few states of Africa which managed to escape The Collapse for now - sent high-ranking diplomats to a luxurious Hotel in the Swiss Alps to discuss the early stages what later would be know as Project Tsukoyomi. They agreed to funnel money, industrial capacities, research and manpower into building a network of large selfsustaining shelters to preserved humanity in the case of an extinction-level event.
ReplyDeleteMost of the work would be done by AI-controlled mining and construction drones. Funds would be generated by using so called scavenger bots to mine near Earth asteroids for valuable ressources .
The AI would later be given honorable citizen status of the Lunar colonies, after the break-up of the Musik dynasty.
We should use the Gateway approach to exploring Mars, only utilize a hollowed out Phobos as our orbiting base of operations.
ReplyDeleteTo quote another SF writer, we have no idea how to land a human on Mars.
"Landing safely on Mars is hard. The atmosphere is too thin for aerobraking of massive payloads, but thick enough to kick up horribly unpredictable turbulence if you try and use retro-rockets. So for small payloads recent probes have used the bouncy air-bag trick ... but that involves loads of up to 20 gees on impact (not good for humans!) and maxes out at around 1000 kg of payload (or the airbags are infeasibly bulky and heavy). The big sky crane approach is promising (allows retro-rockets while avoiding the turbulence/disruption of landing site effect) but nobody's tried doing it on a payload within an order of magnitude of the size necessary for even an unfueled ascent stage capable of sending an astronaut back into orbit: an ascent stage with fuel on board would be even more massive (on the order of 40-50 tons, minimum)."
20 gees will kill a man.
At only 38% of Earth's gravity perhaps we can construct a space elevator anchored at Mars' equator using automated equipment controlled by humans based on Phobos.
Or we can land automated PFC factories on Mars that will create enough super GHGs to heat up Mars and generate a sufficiently thick atmosphere (mostly CO2) that will allow for safe parachute landings.
Or we come up with insanely more powerful and efficient rocket engines to allow for landing and take off from Mars' relatively deep gravity well.
Or we make all Mars landings by humans one way trips.
In fact, the Gateway approach is the best method for all planetary exploration.
ReplyDeleteWe can't land on any of the gas giants or ice giants, so set up abase on Callisto for exploring Jupiter and all the other moons (safely outside Jupiter's magnetic field which would fry a huma being), Titan for exploring Saturn and its moons, any of the icy moons of Neptune and Uranus. And orbit artificial satellites around Venus and Mercury (being sure to stay in Mercury's shadow).
In other word, screw planets.
The most cost effective way to colonize/explore the solar system is by avoiding deep gravity wells.
So the near-term future (next thousand years) of manned colonization of space should be the asteroid belt. So instead of Mars, we should colonize the dwarf planet Ceres (the largest body in the asteroid belt) in order to establish a logistical base for asteroid prospecting and mining. Ceres has no significant gravity well to overcome and lots of water for life and fuel.
So instead of Star Fleet planting human colonies on the surfaces of planets, we'll have the Weyland-Yutani Corporation contracting out the asteroid equivalent of oil rig and crab fishing work - extremely dirty and dangerous work with a high death rate. Think "rough necks in space" performing work that makes investors back home extremely wealthy, mankind more prosperous and the workers themselves a small fortune with each service contract (if they live long enough to return to Earth to spend their money).
So forget about the bright, shiny and clean Enterprise from Star Trek, our future in space is the dirty, gritty and dangerous Nostromo. In fact, our whole future in space will look more like the "Alien" universe instead of "Star Trek" (face huggers and chest busters optional).
Avoiding deep gravity wells is why we should (using robots and automation controlled from Gateway orbiting platforms) industrialize the Moon, mining out its metals, establish water processing plants and silene fuel refineries. Granted, lunar metals are more difficult and costly to process but at 1/6 G the reduced launch costs more than make up for the additional costs of metal refining.
ReplyDeleteMake the moon our industrial shipyard, our future "Cape Canaveral" from which we launch all other missions to the solar system.
As we expand through the galaxy, we should avoid planets. Simply utilizing the suns (and black holes) as energy sources for our starships which will be self contained mini-worlds the size of large cities with populations to match). Future mankind 10,000s years hence may look at living on a planet's surface as abnormal.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to avoiding costly gravity wells, any planet capable of bearing life or already having life is going to be hostile to humans and other Earth organisms (like the bacteria that killed Wells' invading Martian or the prions in KSR's "Aurora"). And building megastructures and artificial worlds is so much cheaper and less time consuming than terraforming.
Is it inherently immoral to land on a planet that already has life (no matter how primitive) and could be wiped out by Earth organisms we bring with us?
ReplyDeleteTerraforming such a world would almost certainly be a crime against nature.
"Is it inherently immoral to land on a planet that already has life ..."
DeleteYour question presumes that "nature" is inherent to a specific location, including (but not limited to) a planet, and that intrusion from outside is immoral. But what if the universe is "the system", and moving from one planet to another all takes place within one very large ecosystem that includes everything all at once?
A crime implicit in Asimov's universe as I show in FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH.
DeleteMeh. Mars is a dead world on the surface and heading for oblivion. There is NO WAY it comes alive again without us. Venus is a dead Hell-hole. Luna is dead. Very dead.
DeleteIf the folks concerned about ethics want us to be careful with the roofed worlds like Europa or even Titan, I'm okay with that. I'm not okay with with them objecting to the use of dead worlds.
Objecting to terraforming in principle is deeply unethical. There is no way we become a multi-planetary civilization without bringing Terra with us and adapting Her to new environments.
If luna, Mars and Venus are dead then terra forming poses no ethical problems
DeleteLooks like we are putting boots on the ground.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVRZG8XMw7o
'FINAL BLOW': Pentagon Preps Ground Troop Iran Deployment
When we land, our brave marines and elite paratroopers are going to be slaughtered.
The Iranians are waiting for us with thousands of drones held in reserve for our beachheads.
It will be "Black Hawk Down Streets of Mogadishu" on steroids and taken to several orders of magnitude.
Together, the regular armed forces, the Artesh, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are made up of approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel plus 350,000 reserve and trained personnel that can be mobilized when needed, bringing the country's military manpower to about 960,000 total personnel.
We have about 5,000 ground troops in the Persian Gulf.
Do the fucking math.
Trump and Hegseth are doing this land invasion out of desperation because we are losing.
Losing badly
So, this is from the Royal United Services Institute. It is one of the oldest, I believe it might be the oldest
defense think tank in the world. Uh it's a UK-based think tank and very similar let's say here to the United States, the CSIS, the what is it? Center for Strategic Institute Studies,
something like that. Uh these are very respected uh defense think tanks,
usually very tied into the military-industrial complex and almost always actually have a pro-war bias.
However, they're very good at what they do. They do a lot of analysis around interceptors, math, they read budget proposals, they look at open source, and they compile all the data together. So,II want to be clear here. They don't have the exact data, but they have a very good track record. Now, here is what they warn. Let's put my uh tweet please
up here on the screen. So, the Royal Services the Royal United Service Institute now estimates Israel is days
away from running out of arrow interceptors and that the United States has already burned about 40% of the
available THAAD stockpile in the Iran war and only has about 3 weeks left. So,
let me linger here a little bit on all of the types of munitions, the Aero2 and A3 munitions. These are the interceptors that come up, hit the Iranian missiles.
By the way, they haven't even been working that well.
So we have about three weeks (maybe a few more days because of Trump's unilateral cease fire) before the Iranians can strike any target at will without fear of reprisal or concerns about interceptors.
After such an humiliating debacle you can expect American soldiers dragged through the streets and prisoners being used for propaganda purposes.
And "Captain Bone Spurs" Trump (who dodged the Vietnam draft) will call them fools and losers like he did the GIs buried in that cemetery in France.
After that Israel and America have only one more card to play.
It's nice to hear Dr Brin refer to the Artemis Mission as a Moondoogle as it has absolutely no scientific rationale & its sole justification is to prove that women & minorities are just as spaceflight capable as all those (evil; white; sexist; racist; male) NASA astronauts of yesteryear.
ReplyDeleteI mean, really, Jeff Bezos has already proved this point in spades by launching a fully-automated rocket with a full cargo of 6 multiethnic females into space for almost ten tear-filled & highly emotional minutes. !! You go gurl !!
When Dr Brin hinted about the "HUGE benefits of Gateway for enhanced national defense" though, I was somewhat less than impressed as the Nukes-in-Orbit trope (aka 'Project Damocles') has already been done to death by films like 'In Like Flint' & 'Space Cowboys'.
Even so, the very idea of turning Gateway into a luxury hotel for certain oppressed Epstein-associated Billionaires to have very expensive zero gravity sex with trafficked children & infants does have its selling points.
It's unfortunate, however, that our fine host fails to mention the one advantage that an actual lunar base would have over any orbital space station, that being GRAVITY, as all humans experience rapid muscle atrophy & may lose up to 20% of their total muscle mass after just weeks in a zero gravity environment.
Best
It's not "Nukes In Space!" that matters at this point. What we have right now is better described as High Ground.
DeleteI'm not a big fan of using Lunar Gateway for military purposes. Not because I'm feelind dovish, though. It's too far out. I'd be tempted to put up a big honkin' observation platform just above the geocentric orbit and tack on a bunch of beam weapons for sats sent over to investigate. Put people up there too.
Moonbase EVENTUALLY? Sure. I'd love to live to see city lights there. Send 100 robots to prospect for the best site while refining the still caveman-level skills at ISRU and regolith sintering and protection from poison dust. But asteroids are where the riches lie. Which is THE reason extractive plutocrats want us wasting time in a ridiculous 'race' with the Chinese. Anyone who talks of 'lunar resources' SMACK them silly for reciting snake oil.
ReplyDeleteYes - the "asteroids"
DeleteThe first - easiest - one to go for is Deimos
Deimos is about the right size - big enough to be useful for a long time - small enough to make "mining and extracting" easy - escape velocity 20 km per HOUR
AND it spins relatively slowly - 30hrs/rev which would make it easy to use a tether to "mine" its momentum
Mars would be useful to do an aerocapture - saving fuel and as a nearby research object
Duncan,
DeleteYour figure of merit appears to be delta vee. When thinking about 'easiest' I recommend you think a bit harder about the time involved before investors see any return on their investment. That's what matters to them.
Risky projects START with an expectation of 55% compounding per year and go higher if there are any honest-to-goodness technical risks.
The only reason I don't advocate for lunar projects (which have a MUCH shorter project timeframe) is I can't think of anything worth extracting for profit. Yet. We need industry up there before lunar projects have a reasonable chance at a positive ROI.
Think in terms of small NEO's instead of Martian moons. For these targets, a lunar gateway makes perfect sense long before anyone puts a serious number of boots in the dusty regolith of Luna.
Lunar Gateway is what anyone with at least two brain cells to rub together knows is necessary. The debate is about who builds it and controls it.
ReplyDeleteMy only argument against the gateway involves a strong preference for it to be in private hands. CIS-lunar space is now in reach of private industry, so I want their interests to dominate the choices made out there... but not in that tail-wagging-the-dog sense of NASA contractors determining what happens.
Landing men on the moon again is like Palpitine returning somehow. They're both re-runs from pure habit.
ReplyDeleteYah. What's next? Oh! I know! Let's revive the Cold War. Nukes and all!
DeleteNukes in space? Pah!
ReplyDeleteJust the threat of grabbing a rock and hurling it at whomever you do not fancy should be enough. For finer detail work, you can use Rods from God.
The energy in a Rod from God is the energy that you have put there by lifting it into orbit
DeleteThe same with a "rock" - it will take a huge amount of energy to shift a space rock so it hits your target
As long as we are limited by current rocketry they will not replace nukes
I am NOT talking about nuclear bombs or missiles in space. I mean defensive surveillance, which enemies will try to decapitate by blowing up LEO and GEO and harming humanity for 10,000 years. If we have safer assets farther out, they won't be tempted to do that shit.
DeleteTry thinking outside your box:
ReplyDeleteLoft a few hundred 55 gallon drums packed with 5mm ball bearings into orbit & then detonate them, simultaneously creating an impenetrable orbital shield, while putting an end to satellite & spaceflight technology for the next 50 years or so.
That'll teach you for trying to weaponize space !
Best
Even when he makes a good point, he completely misses the point.
ReplyDeleteI find it kinda sad several of you assumed that when I spoke of 'defense assets' at Gateway you assumed I meant H-bombs and missiles. It was once thought that such things in 'high ground' would make a war difference but that was dismissed as dumb back in the 60s. We have enough bombs and missiles and enough would easily get through.
ReplyDeleteDeterrence depends on something else. The thing Eisenhower was desperate to achieve and so sent doomed U2 flights over the USSR. And his biggest reason for financing NASA ... but wanting the Soviets to orbit a satellite FIRST!
Wars start (as we are -alas- seeing right now) from being misinformed or delusional about your enemy. And the US has huge advantages now in LEO and GEO-based surveillance.
And any foe may think they can counter that* by simply blowing up everything in both orbits. In LEO at least, it's possible. (^Though we've been putting up armored sats..)
Can you see it now? A big GARAGE for surveillance sats way out in lunar orbit? A special orbit that's really tricky to match? And the garage is continuously getting armored by bags of leftover asteroid samples? Bags that also protectcrews against radiation?
I have no idea if this is among the reasons Putin ordered trump to shift to an insanely stoopid purported surface 'base.' But it fits.
Rather than missing your point, I'm invoking the Heckler's Veto:
ReplyDelete(1) Governance depends on the unanimous consent of the governed;
(2) Global Order depends on the universal availability of cheap energy;
(3) AI-driven complexity depends on an intact & sustainable power grid; and
(4) Surveillance technologies in no way guarantee either enforcement or obedience.
You must therefore COMPROMISE if you wish to progress towards the uncompromising future that you most desire because the days of controlling your opposition thru exposure are long past, as your opposition is now entirely without shame.
Best
______
So, if the US has (such) huge advantages now in LEO and GEO-based surveillance, why aren't they winning bigly in the Ukraine & Iran ???.
90% wrong on every single count, doof.
Deleteonward
ReplyDeleteonward