We have had bases in antartica for how long? Anyone refer to them as colonies?

We have military stationed in bases with no colonization going on.

I am refering to working in space as the same as doing deep sea drilling, you may have to live on a platform for six months and go in a dive suit a couple times a week but you are not colonizing the sea bed.

My folks are awfully sensitive about that word all of a sudden.

What you did say was

“we are going to physically move off world and include first the inner solar system then the outer solar system into our specie’s economic sphere of activity over the long term.”

But I guess we can’t call these “colonies” any more.

I think they meant real commerce — people in the private sector serving the needs of other people in the private sector. Not government contracts redubbed “commerce.”

Except for a brief involvement early in its history with an early communications satellite (much more a product of the military than of NASA), NASA has never in its over 50 year history lived up to this part of its charter. What makes you believe it can start now?

I live in North Dakota, if I drive to Arizona and stay there for a day, week, month, guess what? I am now living in Arizona. I am not there to colonize, or become a resident, just live there until I return. Wherever my body is, that is where I am currently living.

If I fly, perpenticular from the Earth’s surface, and stay there a week/month, guess what? I am living in space. It is the same if I am on Luna for month or Mars for a month. What does trying to live somewhere have to do with freakin’ colonization? Those are two different animals.

You never bothered to answer the basic premise of my question.

Are we going to try and learn, through the creative use of technology, SANE governmental policies and incentives for commercial firms to try and LIVE offworld or not?

No, Vladislaw, I do not agree. Your approach to space colonization is hopelessly misguided. You are profoundly confusing the present tense with the future tense (a typical sci-fi confusion), and importance with urgency and feasibility. You also fail to recognize that human living is not primarily about our bodies — a classic voodoo belief — it is about our societies, and in particular our economies. Human bodies in space are useless (and indeed eventually must die or return to earth) without an economy in space to support them. It’s the latter that must come first.

“It depends on what you want NASA to do on the Moon. Its not NASA’s role to build a lunar colony. Its NASA’s function to do the basic science on the Moon to determine if lunar colonization and industrialization is possible. That’s what a tiny lunar base could teach us. We need to know:”

A nice list of reasons Marcel except for one thing, you are not following what the NASA is actually mandated to do and instead are imposing them on the NASA.

Let’s look at the ammended version of the Space Act of 1958 that created NASA.

“(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space.

Think about those two words for a minute Marcel … SEEK and ENCOURAGE.

Seek doesn’t mean to wait around and see what happens. That means NASA is supposed to go and and shake the freakin’ bushes and actively SEEK commercial ways of doing everything they do…. EVERYTHING.

When they do spot any potential commercial space activity or are made aware of it then what are they supposed to do? ENCOURAGE it to the MAXIMUM extent possible.

You steadfastly refuse to acknowledge this, incorporate it into your responses and until you do NASA will just continue to be a pawn of congressional pork interests and the aerospace status quo.

It is not about success, it is not about putting America and Americans in space and it ESPECIALLY is not about allowing American enterpreneurialism having full and total access to the space frontier, christ, how could they, the congressional porkers, control all those billions?

That is part C .. it is at the top of NASA’s mandate, it comes pretty much before everything else Marcel, do you finally understand that Marcel? Commercializing space is above 99.9% of everything NASA is mandated to do.

On to part D.

(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;”

Does it say improve their vehicles? If you understand the importance of what NASA does for commercial aviation you might just begin to grasp what NASA is supposed to be doing for commercial space. It is commercial space vehicles that NASA is mandated to be working to make better, not this self destructive path we are on to the entire Nation’s ability to move forward in space.

Okay, now with a firm grasp of what NASA is actually mandated to do, in front of each or your points, add a codicle on how that point could be accomplished with commercial firms and NASA acting as the enabler only with the commerical firm taking the lead.

As a species, we are either going to be obese couch potatoes watching robots do it all in space from the comfort of our couch, or we are going to physically move off world and include first the inner solar system then the outer solar system into our specie’s economic sphere of activity over the long term.

Can we agree on that much?

As a species we will either stay home or try to live off world?

If we do not ever want to, or plan to leave earth than lets shut down all government spending relating to it because it will never be needed as we are physically never going off world.

If we do want to or plan to live off world than the first thing must be the freakin’ science of a human living off world, if the species is incapable of that feat the rest is moot anyway.

Either the human body can adjust to the rigors of living off world, through creative use of technology, or it can’t.

So to answer your question, if we want to live off world, then yes, in the beginning, nothing else matters except what the human body sustain and for how long.

In other words, it’s all about astronauts for the sake of astronauts. Nothing matters except astronauts.

I would think the science of staying alive. Hunker down for 3 months then six months at a time, looking at the biological effects of staying there. Do a couple EVA’sa week with a rover and collect samples. We have to mature the systems and evolve them as we learn what it takes. Start working on oxygen extraction tests, and water extraction tests. See if the the resources are exploitable.

Questions 1-2 and 5-6 are irrelevant to any affordable (i.e. unmanned) private industry on the moon.

Questions 3-4 can be learned at much lower cost by sending unmanned rovers to do the sampling and test processing. Some of it also by setting up test factories in environmental simulators on earth.

Questions 7-8 involve economic fantasies of no interest to serious private industry, as I’ve explained elsewhere.

In any case, there is no budget line for any of these items in the above-quoted cost estimates. Accomplishing these tasks, especially in a way requiring the intrusion of astronauts to justify the expense already lavished on them, would balloon costs very far beyond the bare-bones and already low-balled lunar RVs.