The Moon, by contrast, has no water (it is so dry if it had dry concrete would would mine it for the water), and is missing many key materials. Its only oxygen is tightly bound in rocks that need high energy melting to extract it. It has no atmosphere, a two week day night cycle, meaning no farms. The Moon may be an outpost, but it will never be a home.

I do recall reading in the Draft Crew Exploration Vehicle solicitation released back in Jaunary the missions envisioned for CEV in Spirals 1-5, up to and including manned missions to Mars. Now it didn’t name who would be in the crews, but I thought that was a pretty good definition of what NASA has in mind to do.

I don’t believe either the Administration as a whole or NASA has done much to engage the public, or even Congess (beyond Mr. DeLay, anyway) with the Vision for Exploration. Perhaps that’s appropriate for an initiative that is still ill-defined beyond a new family of spacecraft, but it’s a lacuna that needs filling if the Exploration Initiative is to be funded over the long run.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/5031e78a-8614-11d9-b506-00000e2511c8.html

Specifically this at the end:

“I was imagining what it would be like if you ripped out all the things sometimes claimed to have no practical applications – the Apollo space programme, Concorde, medieval cathedrals – what would you be left with? A pale shadow that would inspire no one.”

Regarding “spiritual benefits,” you are right, I did not talk about them here, though I have elsewhere. What I mean is that, throughout human history, most cultures have had their greatest “flowerings” of original ideas, arts, sciences, technologies, whatever, when they are engaged in physical exploration of something totally new. You can’t discover something new by staring at your navel. I personally believe that this input of new ideas into an old culture is the most valuable aspect of physical exploration, and why it cannot be done by machines.

Regarding Saturn, my admittedly far out speculation went as follows below. I admit that I am neither a chemical engineer nor a physicist, so some or all of this may be off base. I also believe it is worth thinking about far future things like colonizing the rest of the Solar System, especially since I believe that, at some point, we will cross a technological threashold and transportation will become relatively easy (note, though, that easy is not the same as fast; the initial colonization of the Americas was relatively efficient but very slow, both for the individual colonist and as a process). I believe what follows is reasonable speculation for someone attempting to look so far in the future, but I may not have been clear.

Anyway, the reasoning at Saturn (and the rest of the outer Solar System). The question is, how do you provide power for a permanent, live-off-the-land colony at Saturn?

1). Most of the ices on the moons probably are at or near chemical equilibrium, therefore it will be difficult to impossible for any people visiting or living in the Saturn system to generate chemical energy. For example, you can’t burn something without free oxygen or another oxydizer and a fuel. You have to find or create chemicals that are not at equilibrium. If it takes as much energy to liberate the oxygen and fuel out of local resources, as you get out by burning them, assuming no other input, you’re up a creek.

2). Fissile materials and other heavy metals will be extremely difficult to come by in the outer Solar System and probably will need to be imported. Hence, you’re not likely to use fission to maintain a large scale colony over long periods.

3). Most fusion reactions require some sort of intense energy input to start the reaction, e.g., the chemical trigger in a hydrogen bomb, or the high-energy lasers for intertial confinement fusion, or the high-energy magnetic fields for magnetic confinement fusion.

4). If you are living off the land at Saturn for an extended period, and, for any reason, you lose your fusion reaction, where does the power come from to start it back up? If you’re smart, you’ve got something stored away you can use to “trigger” the reaction. My suggestion was a store of fissile material, but a really big mirror to concentrate sunlight would also work.

5). In human history, when a culture has needed to maintain a critical resource over long periods of time, it has almost always fallen to religious institutions to maintain the resource. Because of their inherent extreme conservatism, religious institutions tend to be the longest lived of human organizations.

I freely admit that this is Science Fiction, but I believe that it is reasonable Science Fiction.

— Donald

Americans don’t like it _at all_ when other countries are in charge of this frontier. Vocal public support or not, politicians will really know about it if America’s lead is lost. And like the rest of the economy, the time of easy dominance appears to be drawing to a close.

Will we just throw up our hands and capitulate? Saturn may sound a long way off, but whether or not Americans one day have to apply for a visa to visit Saturn or other closer places may be determined by our actions in the next 25 years or so.

The posting appears to be one describing members of academia realizing their “kingdom” is in jeopardy. It is unfortunate they react in such ways, but it is human nature.

Mr. Lane is incorrect in his statement that the effort has not excited the public and has no clear goals or plans. Mr. O’Keefe repeatedly expressed his astonishment at the public’s excitement; both through his personal interaction and via the number of hits the NASA website has experienced. Furthermore, from the day of President Bush’s announcement, the VSE has had a clear set of goals and a time table in which to complete them. The CEV flyoff, shuttle retirement, and returning to the moon are only some of the major milestones awaiting us in the not too distant future.

The scientific community must take a step back and look at the VSE in its broadest sense. Yes, it may “eat someone’s lunch” to accomplish needed goals, but instead of sending out the occasional probe on a mission-type basis, a sustainable infrastructure will be created to send (en masse) the greatest probe of them all – the human.