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Coffee House => Coffee House Boards => CH / Science and Technology => Topic started by: countzero on January 27, 2006, 12:18:14 PM
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russia plans to mine the moon for Helium-3.
http://www.physorg.com/news10221.html
millenium (http://hol.abime.net/5159) & deuteros (http://hol.abime.net/340), anyone ?
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by the way, the resources on the moon ... Are they available as first come first serve basis ? does anyone know the legal status of this plan ?
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How the hell is Russia going to pay for that...
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As far as I know, there is a treaty in place (sort-of similar to the Law of the Sea) which states that anything beyond x km of Earth's surface belongs to everyone, and thus the UN. (See here (http://www.un.org/events/unispace3/bginfo/gares.htm), for example.) But knowing human nature, it won't be for long until someone decides that those damn are mining too much He-3 or ice, causing all hell to break loose. Some right-wingers in the United States already consider the Moon to belong to them, because they were the first to set foot on it. A sort-of finders-keepers mentality which sickens me to my stomach. To the wall with the lot of them. I also have no doubt that eventually the Moon will become an independent nation simply because any other situation will be met with disapproval, jealousy and military conflict. (Besides, it is sort-of impossible to genuinely consider people 400.000 km away to be your masters. As in: who and what army?)
I can heartily recommend Ben Bova's excellent SF series Moonrise and Moonwar for a brilliant story based on precisely this situation.
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Pssst, between you and me - it's cheese they're really after!
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Current Russian policy to supply most of Europe with gas and oil - and also Asia when the Sakhalin complex is on stream - is earning them huge revenues.
In the next fifty years, we will see a gradual move away from fossil fuels. If Russia is serious about mining He3, then it stands to continue to gain financially by scaling back it's oil & gas production in favour of monopolising the world's supply of He3.
However, the practical problems are enormous. Remember that no-one has walked on the moon since 1972 and no Cosmonaut has walked on the moon at all. Russia does have extensive experience with automated space vehicles, but it's unlikely that the mining and shipping processes can be entirely automated.
Although sources of oxygen and water have been identified, considerable engineering work would be required to shield cosmonauts from solar radiation and micro meteorites. It's cost upward of $60bn to put a space station into orbit the size of three double decker busses and crewed by five people. The ISS crew is also less than 300 miles from the Earth as opposed to the 250,000 miles to Earth from the lunar surface.
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dont forget that it was NASA that put the ISS up - using the Space Shuttle.
In general, they like to over think their plans, and try for the Rolls-Royce solution...
cf: manned mars exploration by NASA, and Rick Zubrin's Mars Direct plan:
compare 400 Billion USD to 35 Billion USD...
oh - the ISS is about 500km above the Earth, and in an orbit inclined about 50 degrees to the equatorial plane.
-edited to correct the finances ... still not sure of the costs estimated by NASA in Bush Snr's presidency, but it was sufficiently large for congress to balk !!
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odin wrote:
How the hell is Russia going to pay for that...
Gas... :-/
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Speaking of Rolls Royce and the Moon...
Rolls Royce made the Pegasus Turbofan which keeps the Harrier jump jet floating. Strangely enough they didn't perfect the hovering stability of the jump jet until the 80s...
So how did they manage to land an even more advanced 'lunar module' on the moon 10 years earlier - a surface 200,000 miles away, with a device that looked like a bunk-bed powered by compressed gas and then drive a jeep across the surface and plant the Stars & Stripes.
Hollywood? YEEHAW!
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Space flight is relatively simple. It's getting into, and out of, space that is the problem. Besides, if the Russians get working fusion reactors, then we'd really be able to make good use of ion-engines.
All we need is launching/landing platforms, here and on the moon. That is of course quite costly, but as ohers have pointed out: The Russians have a fortune in un-exploited natural resources.
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Space flight maybe be simpler than flight on Earth but that lunar module still had to contend with lunar gravity, landing and launching trajectories and docking, varying landing and launching weights and filming for the camera left on the moon. I don't understand how they managed such a feat 30yrs ago on the processing power of a calculator.
My favourite idea for space propulsion is the large metallic sail that NASA proposed building to catch the solar particles. They used the idea in one of the last Star Wars films, it's kind of goofy!
I read about one idea for space propulsion that involved bending space around the nose of a spaceship to create a tiddlywinks effect. When you think that we are finding stars with Earth-like planets that are 20,000 light years away (and that's just to the centre of OUR galaxy) then we are going to have to work out how to travel faster than any particle in the magnetic spectrum.
As for these new Fusion reactors, the first of which is to be built in France soon, has anyone stopped to consider that when Fission was first invented the first use killed 300,000 people? That may have been a mis-use but what happens with Fusion if you get a Chernobyl?
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Space flight maybe be simpler than flight on Earth but that lunar module still had to contend with lunar gravity, landing and launching trajectories and docking, varying landing and launching weights and filming for the camera left on the moon. I don't understand how they managed such a feat 30yrs ago on the processing power of a calculator.
Please tell me you are kidding with your hints that the moon launch didnt happen, or that 12 americans didnt walk on its surface, or are you really that delusional??
As for these new Fusion reactors, the first of which is to be built in France soon, has anyone stopped to consider that when Fission was first invented the first use killed 300,000 people? That may have been a mis-use but what happens with Fusion if you get a Chernobyl?
Also you need to read alot about the history of fission if you really believe the above.
-Tig
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Back in 1950s America (when everyone sat around with their pipe, slippers and knitted tanktop) a radio show was broadcast. It was a dramatisation of War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells and it was so realistic that half the radio listening population thought that real aliens from the planet Mars were invading.
Back in 1970s America (when everyone sat around with their bongs, platforms and flower-power t-shirts) a TV program was broadcast. It claimed that Earth Men from the nation of 'America' had defeated the evil communists and driven a dune buggy on the moon whilst posing for photographs, falling arseways over moon dust, bouncing around and then blasting back off in their magical spaceship.
Tigger: Did YOU believe this 'Pooh'?
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Back in 1950s America (when everyone sat around with their pipe, slippers and knitted tanktop) a radio show was broadcast. It was a dramatisation of War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells and it was so realistic that half the radio listening population thought that real aliens from the planet Mars were invading.
I notice you and history have a big schism in reality, the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles occured in 1938 not in the 1950s.
Back in 1970s America (when everyone sat around with their bongs, platforms and flower-power t-shirts) a TV program was broadcast. It claimed that Earth Men from the nation of 'America' had defeated the evil communists and driven a dune buggy on the moon whilst posing for photographs, falling arseways over moon dust, bouncing around and then blasting back off in their magical spaceship.
Sorry in 1969, I wasnt sitting around with a bong or a flower power shirt, instead I watched Neil Armstrong walk on the moon. Just to satisfy my curiosity when does your little mind think the hoax started, was Apollo 7 a hoax when they did the first live tv broadcast from a manned spacecraft. Or did they start it with Apollo 8 when they broadcast live while orbitting the moon, Or Apollo 9 when they first tested the lunar module, or was Apollo 10 when we first received color TV signals from space, all of which is pretty hard to fake out not only the US, but of course the russians who would have loved to say, the US isnt really orbiting the moon. Or is it just Apollo 11 you think was the hoax when they first landed on the moon?? Apollo 12 a fake too, though they recovered parts of Surveyer 3?? Apollo 13 a hoax even though they never claimed to land on the moon?? Why fake not landing on the moon in you opinion?? Apollos 14-17 all fakes in your mind as well. A conservative estimate places the number of people in on a fake of this magnitude to be 27,000 honestly believe that since that time the number obviously having grown into the millions that still this grand conspiracy has yet to be revealed??? Learn a little, before responding.
-Tig
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I notice you and history have a big schism in reality
Since when have racism and ignorance ever got in the way of a paranoid delusion Tig? ;-)
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As for these new Fusion reactors, the first of which is to be built in France soon, has anyone stopped to consider that when Fission was first invented the first use killed 300,000 people? That may have been a mis-use but what happens with Fusion if you get a Chernobyl?
You're a bit out of line with historical details. Fusion has already been turned into a weapon: these are the infamous hydrogen bombs, next to which a fission bomb (U- or Pu-based) is a toy. It is a fusion bomb which holds the world record for the largest man-made explosion ever of 58 megatonnes of TNT. Not even that little mountain incident in North Korea a year or two back comes close.
Then you need to refresh your physics. Fusion is incredibly hard to achieve in low g-environments because we cannot create a sufficiently dense plasma for fusion reactions to take place at a productive rate. The only option you have is very delicate tuning of magnetic fields and very, very high temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius. If there is but a single leak in the magnetic cage or the enclosing hull, the fusion process stops immediately. Of course, there will be an explosion, but this is simply because of a short-circuit---not because of a runaway nuclear reaction. There is an additional risk of the release of a tiny amount of high-energy neutrons, and thus of casualties, but they won't have such lasting consequences as when a fission plant blows.
The fact that the Sun manages it at ridiculously low temperatures of 15 million degrees and less is because of its much higher self-gravity. That forces the density of the hydrogen plasma up to values we would die for here on Earth. Where's a bloody gravity-generator when you need one...
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Space flight maybe be simpler than flight on Earth but that lunar module still had to contend with lunar gravity, landing and launching trajectories and docking, varying landing and launching weights and filming for the camera left on the moon. I don't understand how they managed such a feat 30yrs ago on the processing power of a calculator.
because this "feat" wasn't done using a calculator. it was done using many talented human minds working at full capacity. THAT'S why it was and still is the most amazing thing homo sapians have ever done.
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cecilia wrote:
because this "feat" wasn't done using a calculator. it was done using many talented human minds working at full capacity. THAT'S why it was and still is the most amazing thing homo sapians have ever done.
Amen!
Putting a man on the moon ranks as humanity's greatest ever achievement. Although the motives were political and some of the personnel involved in the space race had very shady backgrounds, the end result was beyond question.
Those twelve men were sent there represented the noble human desires to explore and to gain knowledge.
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Back you dogs, back I say!
*CRACK*
Tigger: It may have been Orson Welles's voice but H.G.Wells wrote it. Orson Welles also did the Transformers movie, quite a fall from grace - first he announces the world is going to end, then "Autobots Transform!".
1938/1950s - Okay I got the dates wrong, half the US population was gullible 12 years earlier than I stated.
27,000 couldn't be wrong about the moon landings? There are 2 million employees of the Pentagon - fat load of good that did the truth when it came to Iraq!
Cymric: I'm out on my history? It was a Soviet 100-Megaton bomb that topped the yield tables. The shockwave blew villagers off their bicycles 50 miles from the test site.
As for Fusion bomb - I concede my knowledge of weapons of mass destruction is out of date (A bit like the CIA's) but the device is still AKA Fission-Fusion-Fission.
mdma: I'd like to slap you for my linching... but you're buddhist.
Alas, I still don't believe man has landed on the moon. Troll away learne'd ones, I'm going to burn an effigy of Neil Armstrong.
:-)
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Hum,
As a quirk of fate, i noticed that 40 years ago, on February 3rd 1966, Luna 9 Landed on the Moon (1st Moon Landing)...
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Alas, I still don't believe man has landed on the moon.
so how did all that "junk" get up there???
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I'm not disputing we have placed things into orbit or sent probes around the solar system. I'm not disputing Hubble (even though the images are touched up with those colours) and maybe I am mixing anti-war with anti-science.
However there are a number of scientists that have made it vocal that the radiation levels on the moon would be too high, as would venturing too far from near Earth orbit. They say that for a week long journey back in '69 it would have killed the astronauts and THAT is why Russia never made it. What happened to Laika, and that monkey?
I've never been into conspiracy theories but I've read somewhere that the only solution to this problem of man(/woman) exploring deeper space is to somehow constantly regenerate the nerve tissue that is damaged by over-exposure to radiation (remember how instant this was in that film about Los Alamos?).
Interesting then that over the last few years medical science has 'put all it's eggs in one basket' with regards to embryonic stem cell research; cells that can be told to grow into anything you want them to - including damaged nerves.
If man did land on the moon then I'm sure we've been given a much glossier image of it than we should have. Such a feat would have incurred much higher casualties and would have taken a lot more time and money than a single economy could have coped with. And probably adding to the rose-tinted view of the landings is the fact we never went back... but now Bush has spent all his pocket money.
Anyway, I'm sceptical and not totally against the moon landings - but like the holocaust, which many are now questioning, information is kept far too secret, things are glossed over, spin and lies blur reality. Even truth can become tarnished.
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Hyperspeed wrote:
1938/1950s - Okay I got the dates wrong, half the US population was gullible 12 years earlier than I stated.
First of all half the population didnt believe we were being invaded, half the population of the US didnt listen to Orson Welles broadcast every week. Anyone who actually tuned in for the start of the show, knew it was a show (as it was announced that way), anyone who was listening at the 40 minute mark, were again told it was just a radio play based on a story, three more times during the show they were again told it was just a radio show based on the War of the Worlds Novel. This myth you are spreading that half of the US believed we were being invaded is just that, a myth. Really read a little before posting silly things again.
27,000 couldn't be wrong about the moon landings?
Is English a language you dont understand very well?? A minimum of 27K have to be involved in the coverup during the Apollo Program is the theory you are supporting. Since then that number has to have grown immensely, in the millions as we've talked about. Really believe millions of people past and present are part of a coverup that the US made it to the moon, plus at least 13 other nations are helping us with the coverup??? (Including Russia, Ukraine and China?)
There are 2 million employees of the Pentagon
No there aren't but hey facts and you have a big schism anyways.
Alas, I still don't believe man has landed on the moon.
Then tell us oh wise one what really happened. How come I can bounce light off of the lunar laser ranging retroreflector array to this day?? Can you explain that?? How did people in at least 14 countries receive data from the moon during the Apollo missions in your myth scenario?? And again you didnt answer the question about when did the coverup start for the Apollo program, Apollo 4?? I mean if you believe it starts after Apollo 8, we have the problem that they are already orbitting the moon, landing on it is a pretty easy feat. Where exactly did you go to school that you would have so little knowledge of science, math and physics that you can believe this theory??
-Tig
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Cymric: I'm out on my history? It was a Soviet 100-Megaton bomb that topped the yield tables. The shockwave blew villagers off their bicycles 50 miles from the test site.
Actually, no. The Soviets threathened they had a 100 Megatonne bomb; they never detonated it. There was no need, as the Americans got the message. The bomb was 'just' 58 Megatonnes.
As for Fusion bomb - I concede my knowledge of weapons of mass destruction is out of date (A bit like the CIA's) but the device is still AKA Fission-Fusion-Fission.
It's fission-fusion, to be precise, but the fissioning is just there to 'trigger' the fusion. Or fission-bit of fusion-fission-bit of fusion-..., depending on whether the make of the weapon is American or Russian.
However, that doesn't mean it is not a fusion bomb, because a big percentage of the energy released still finds its origin in a fusion reaction. However, there are still bigger bangs for us to discover, for example the antimatter bomb (which has a yield precisely equal to the mass of antimatter you care to put in there---fascinating stuff, by the way, my thesis partly relies on some of its properties).
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Hyperspeed wrote:
However there are a number of scientists that have made it vocal that the radiation levels on the moon would be too high, as would venturing too far from near Earth orbit. They say that for a week long journey back in '69 it would have killed the astronauts and THAT is why Russia never made it. What happened to Laika, and that monkey?
Back when trains were the hot thing, people were convinced the devilish fast trains were a healthhazard and would scare cows to death...
Anyway, don't believe what people say about the earth. The catholic church was right when they burnt everyone saying it was a sphere!
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Hyperspeed wrote:
However there are a number of scientists that have made it vocal that the radiation levels on the moon would be too high, as would venturing too far from near Earth orbit. They say that for a week long journey back in '69 it would have killed the astronauts and THAT is why Russia never made it. What happened to Laika, and that monkey?
Laika was killed due to her oxygen supply running out, Sputnik 2 was never designed to return to Earth. The poor dog was on a one way ticket. The monkey in question might be offended (Ham the chimpanzee - a primate not a monkey) as he is a veteran astronaut and is still alive in a retirement home after successfully being launched by an early Mercury capsule.
Many astronauts / cosmonauts have stayed in space for months at a time (one has clocked up over a year) during extended stays aboard Skylab, Salyut and Mir. These stations have all been placed in low Earth orbit. It is also possible to see satellites and manned spacecraft from the Earth.
I've never been into conspiracy theories but I've read somewhere that the only solution to this problem of man(/woman) exploring deeper space is to somehow constantly regenerate the nerve tissue that is damaged by over-exposure to radiation (remember how instant this was in that film about Los Alamos?).
Long stay astronauts have reported having to take shelter behind batteries in order to shield them from radiation during periods of solar activity. One astronaut actually reports seeing intemittent flashes of light even though his eyes were closed. This was due to radiation hitting his retinas!
Most of the shielding comes from Earth's own magnetic field though.
If man did land on the moon then I'm sure we've been given a much glossier image of it than we should have. Such a feat would have incurred much higher casualties and would have taken a lot more time and money than a single economy could have coped with. And probably adding to the rose-tinted view of the landings is the fact we never went back... but now Bush has spent all his pocket money.
An enormous amount of money was expended in the moon missions. Apollo 1 cost the lives of three astronauts (Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom) on the launch pad due to faulty wiring and poor escape hatch design.
It must be remembered that by the time Apollo 11 touched down, several test flights had taken place - Apollo 7 in earth orbit carrying astronauts for the first time, Apollo 8 went round the moon, Apollo 9 tested the Lunar Module in Earth orbit and Apollo 10 actually got to the moon and the Lunar Module descended to a few miles above the lunar surface before returning to the command module in orbit.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union never publically acknowledged the casualties of it's space programme. It is known that several rockets were destroyed on the launch pad, killing some of the USSR's greatest scientists. Rumours persist to this very day that cosmonauts were killed in space. Do date, the acknowledged casualties are Vladimir Komarov and the returning crew from Salyut 1.
Anyway, I'm sceptical and not totally against the moon landings - but like the holocaust, which many are now questioning, information is kept far too secret, things are glossed over, spin and lies blur reality. Even truth can become tarnished.
There's no questioning the holocaust. I've actually met allied ex-soldiers who were involved in the liberation of Belsen. The truth is that six million people were robbed of their possessions and met untimely deaths at the hands of a totalitarian regieme.
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Hyperspeed wrote:
I'm not disputing we have placed things into orbit or sent probes around the solar system. I'm not disputing Hubble (even though the images are touched up with those colours) and maybe I am mixing anti-war with anti-science.
Yes, you are.
However there are a number of scientists that have made it vocal that the radiation levels on the moon would be too high, as would venturing too far from near Earth orbit. They say that for a week long journey back in '69 it would have killed the astronauts and THAT is why Russia never made it. What happened to Laika, and that monkey?
*Sigh*. I know Tigger is making an effort, and I know I'm going to make one---simple, polite---but somehow, I know this is not going to be pretty.
I'll begin at the end. Laika and the monkeys suffocated because the oxygen in their capsules ran out. They were, as the saying goes, 'expendable'. Back in the early days of rocketry, it must have been hard to carry up a heavy payload. If you put a satellite into orbit for study, and have to make every gram of it count, you are not going to spend a lot weight on oxygen canisters.
Then the radiation story. If you run into those things, the first thing you need to do is check the facts. And I'm going to. Therefore, could you please tell me who made those statements, on the basis of which data, and where did they publish them? You see, back in the 60's there weren't any satellites in orbit monitoring the radiation flux of the Sun, much like we do today. So, apart from looking at the Sun with helioscopes, and sending up balloons into the upper atmosphere, there really was no way to say with the certainty those anonymous 'scientists' display that the radiation levels on the journeys were 'too high'.
Of course, there was the genuine concern for the passage through the Van Allen belts which girdle the Earth. There, particle energies are much higher because of the interaction with Earth's magnetic field. Since a lot of satellites operate in that area, insurance companies want to know all about radiation levels. Measurements in the capsules, and later measurements of the fluxes themselves coupled with simple orbital mechanics provide a consistent picture: the astronauts got an effective dose of approximately 20 mSv, plus whatever they got from the rest of the journey, which would have been substantially lower. (See this link (http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad19.html) and here (http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/apollo/S2ch3.htm) for the official article on the matter.) That's high when compared to normal people (law states a maximum of about 1 mSv/year for normal people living at sea level, but 20 mSv/year for radiological workers), but short-term adverse affects would not occur until they got slightly over 1 Sv. Long-term is a different matter: you have an increased risk of cancer. But then again, noone is saying that being an astronaut is a healthy profession.
Of course, that doesn't mean they can't be 'too high'. Unprotected, wearing just a space suit, an astronaut would quickly die when in the middle of a strong solar flare. Fortunately, thanks to light speed being as high as it is, we always have several hours early warning to put as much mass between him and the Sun as possible. It's crude, but it works. As a matter of fact, astronauts were trained for such occasions: hide under the lander, under rocky overhangs, whatever it takes to get out of the Sun. Fortunately, the occasion never arose.
Finally, because I like radiation physics, I will tell you all about Mars: it is estimated that the radiation levels for astronauts going to that forsaken rock are bordering on the allowed maxima. They would be exposed to so much radiation (mostly from cosmic rays, not from the Sun) that once they get home, they would never be allowed to go back into space. It is literally the trip of a lifetime. Personally, I think people are more valuable than to be used up in single pointless trips just to prove to the rest of the world that Bush has (and most definitely is) the Biggest Dick of us all.
I've never been into conspiracy theories but I've read somewhere that the only solution to this problem of man(/woman) exploring deeper space is to somehow constantly regenerate the nerve tissue that is damaged by over-exposure to radiation (remember how instant this was in that film about Los Alamos?).
That's quite a lot of SF there, mate. The entire body is degenerating due to exposure. Think of it as posters yellowing in the Sun, but then a little more quickly. Regenerating nerve tissue is the least of your worries: your reproductive organs will be calling it quits first, then the bone marrow. On a trip to the Moon, radiation levels are too low to worry about tissue regeneration, unless you plan on staying there for months. Then you would definitely need additional protection.
Interesting then that over the last few years medical science has 'put all it's eggs in one basket' with regards to embryonic stem cell research; cells that can be told to grow into anything you want them to - including damaged nerves.
Quite.
If man did land on the moon then I'm sure we've been given a much glossier image of it than we should have. Such a feat would have incurred much higher casualties and would have taken a lot more time and money than a single economy could have coped with. And probably adding to the rose-tinted view of the landings is the fact we never went back... but now Bush has spent all his pocket money.
On the basis of what do you conclude that much higher casualties are to be expected? The most dangerous parts of the entire procedure are take-off and reentry to Earth, because of the insane amount of combustible fuel strapped to your backside, and the insanely high temperatures of the spacecraft, respectively. Once you're in space, there really isn't much to harm you, save the occasional meteorite or solar flare. And in fact, things did go wrong a number of times: Apollo 1 proved to be the fiery coffin of three qualified astronauts; Apollo 13 almost, when an explosion knocked out much of the main controls.
Why would it have taken more money than a single economy could cope with? Where are your calculations to show that it is impossible? You are handwaving here, making up reasons instead of checking the facts. And why we never went back? Well, what for? What would we need to do on the Moon, save for conducting astronomical observations, mining the valuable He-3 isotope and building hotels so that people can enjoy the experience of low-g sex? You are completely correct that journeys to the Moon did not come cheap, and nowadays people will want to see a healthy ROI before committing cash. That is why we never went back. The business case is rotten to the core.
Anyway, I'm sceptical and not totally against the moon landings - but like the holocaust, which many are now questioning, information is kept far too secret, things are glossed over, spin and lies blur reality. Even truth can become tarnished.
Being skeptical is okay. But trusting anonymous rumours over hard facts, when they are there, ready for you to check yourself, is inexcusable. (That too goes for your questioning the holocaust---why on Earth would you 'question' it? What's next? Questioning evolution? Questioning that HIV causes AIDS?)
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mdma: I'd like to slap you for my linching... but you're buddhist.
A Buddhist Muay Thai boxer. :-)
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An enormous amount of money was expended in the moon missions. Apollo 1 cost the lives of three astronauts (Ed White, Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom) on the launch pad due to faulty wiring and poor escape hatch design.
not to mention a {bleep}pit atmosphere of almost pure Oxygen. hence the {bleep}pit fire.
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oh for F*ck's sake people ! whent did C.o.c.k.p.i.t. (the place where pilots and astronauts sit) become rude ?! get a grip !!
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oh for F*ck's sake people ! whent did C.o.c.k.p.i.t. (the place where pilots and astronauts sit)
Hum,
no need to swear :rtfm:
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Can we agree on a substitute word / phrase? Male Chicken Trench?
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Hyperspeed wrote:
I'm not disputing we have placed things into orbit or sent probes around the solar system. I'm not disputing Hubble (even though the images are touched up with those colours) and maybe I am mixing anti-war with anti-science.
The images arent touched up, if you want to understand color and Hubble, you need to read about it, I'm not teaching color and Hubble today.
However there are a number of scientists that have made it vocal that the radiation levels on the moon would be too high, as would venturing too far from near Earth orbit. They say that for a week long journey back in '69 it would have killed the astronauts and THAT is why Russia never made it.
Name a scientist today that says that, none do, we watch TV from satellites all that went through what 1940 scientists thought was metal destroying radiation.
What happened to Laika, and that monkey?
Oxygen deprivation for Laika, Lots of monkeys flew in space, the first two to survive landing were Able and Baker in 1959, Baker lived to the age of 27, dying in 1984, both he and Able are buried here in Huntsville on the grounds of the Space and Rocket center. You do understand that the Space Station (which I see fly over every few days) is higher then most of these early monkey flights that you think were killed by radiation apparently. I personally can verify the height of the space station and the shuttle when its up (or the russian resupply rocket) so I too am part of this huge conspiracy about space apparently. If you were talkinga about Chimps, the US sent two to space, Ham the Astrochimp who went into space in 1961, lived in the national zoo for years (I even fed him a banana there once) eventually passing away in 83, 22 years after rocketing into space.
If man did land on the moon then I'm sure we've been given a much glossier image of it than we should have. Such a feat would have incurred much higher casualties and would have taken a lot more time and money than a single economy could have coped with.
First of all how did they cover up the casualties in your mind. I mean I can watch the launches from Kennedy from my parents house, as can millions of others living in Florida, its pretty hard to sneak launch a rocket in the US. So rocket goes up, we know whos on it, we watch film from the rocket we watch as they get out of the rocket, we see interviews with them later, how exactly do you cover up the casualties. Everyone knew when we lost Apollo 1, everyone knew we lost Challenger, everyone knew we lost Columbia, big secrets are hard to keep in the US.
Anyway, I'm sceptical and not totally against the moon landings - but like the holocaust, which many are now questioning,
Holocaust happened, period, end of discussion. Moon Landing happened, period, end of discussion. With knowledge like you have the Flat Earth Society might be a good website for you to hang out on.
-Tig
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Noooooo! I didn't realise that Ham passed away in 1983???
Still, his exploits in space must have earned enough pension to keep the guy comfortable during his retirement years.
Anyone know what the banana / dollar exchange rate is?
:banana:
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PMC wrote:
Noooooo! I didn't realise that Ham passed away in 1983???
Still, his exploits in space must have earned enough pension to keep the guy comfortable during his retirement years.
:banana:
Ham was very well cared for at the National Zoo, and when I went and fed him was considered one of the three big draws at the zoo, the others being the original Panda Bears we had then and the 2 White Bengals. When he got older, he went to basically a senior citizen home for apes in NC, where he was pampered even more. He's buried in New Mexico at the Space Museum there with the other space chimp.
-Tig
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Hyperspeed wrote:
would have taken a lot more time and money than a single economy could have coped with.
The US built over 3000 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles during the 50's, 60's and 70's. Yet you think that our economy would be bankrupt building the less then 20 Saturn V rockets we used as part of the Apollo program??? How does that make sense??
-Tig
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Hyperspeed wrote:
... I'm not disputing Hubble (even though the images are touched up with those colours)...
:roflmao:
that's GOT to be one of the funniest comments ever made.
here: Hubble colors (http://hubblesite.org/sci.d.tech/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of_color/) is a nice simple explaination of how they get Hubble images.
unless, like bush, you really can't read.
i'm giving a test at the end of the week :-)
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Oh God, it's Groundhog Day.
I'm going to wake up every morning at 8am and see my posts on this thread dismembered...
Okay guys I'm going to break with the tradition and admit you were right and I was wrong. My hypothesis was strewn with poor logic, erroneus data, irritability and envy for a superior space program. Oh, and a subscription to Sky TV's babbling cynics society.
I myself have gone through a civilian session of astronaut training at the ESA headquarters in Brussels as a wee man and it didn't leave me terribly convinced - it was just a Euro-fetish shop in my opinion. The only way to convince the general public will be Spaceship One.
Now I'm going to lick my wounds, leave me be you cretins.
Oh yeah, and blobrana is cute.
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Now I'm going to lick my wounds, leave me be you cretins.
As you wish...
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It would make sense to split the rights of the moon up between all who can get there. Sort of like Antarctica.
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USA4Life wrote:
It would make sense to split the rights of the moon up between all who can get there. Sort of like Antarctica.
Actually its funny your brought that up. The US (and the UN) say that antarctica is the property of the world. Japan, several EU nations and the Russians have instead claimed portions as there own. These same nations are very adamant that the US can't claim portions of the moon even though our astronauts are the only ones that have landed there.
-Tig
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In the end, like here on Earth, the moon will belong to whomever can hold it through force of arms.
I find it funny that they still teach that gravity directly causes fusion in the sun. Long before gravity can squish two protons together, hydrogen will be torn into it's basic components: protons and electrons. This occurs at a rather low energy state (relatively speaking).
Once that occurs, you now have the fact that protons are more than 1800 times the weight of electrons, so gravity causes the electrons and protons to separate. This results in HUGE electric fields inside the sun. It's these incredible electric fields that cause fusion to occur.
Instead of trying to make high-density plasmas, they should have been working on electric fusion devices, like the Farnsworth–Hirsch Fusor.
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Cymric wrote:
As far as I know, there is a treaty in place (sort-of similar to the Law of the Sea) which states that anything beyond x km of Earth's surface belongs to everyone, and thus the UN. (See here (http://www.un.org/events/unispace3/bginfo/gares.htm), for example.) But knowing human nature, it won't be for long until someone decides that those damn are mining too much He-3 or ice, causing all hell to break loose. Some right-wingers in the United States already consider the Moon to belong to them, because they were the first to set foot on it. A sort-of finders-keepers mentality which sickens me to my stomach. To the wall with the lot of them. I also have no doubt that eventually the Moon will become an independent nation simply because any other situation will be met with disapproval, jealousy and military conflict. (Besides, it is sort-of impossible to genuinely consider people 400.000 km away to be your masters. As in: who and what army?)
I can heartily recommend Ben Bova's excellent SF series Moonrise and Moonwar for a brilliant story based on precisely this situation.
Ultimately, anyones oppinions or rules about who gets to own what in space are meaningless. If russia wants to build something on the moon, they will pick a spot and it will be theirs. The us will pick a spot, etc. It will be a good 200 years before there is enough people and stuff up there for it to matter.
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they may want to build a mine on the moon, however i doubt they have a big enough engine to do so, launching sats in to Low earth orbit, is a whole lot different to putting a massive amount of tonnage on the moon. The russians answer to the apollo saturn rocket the N-1 crashed and burned many times within 2 minutes. That was the late 60's though.
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In the end, like here on Earth, the moon will belong to whomever can hold it through force of arms.
Maybe not. Maybe when that time comes, we already dropped the borders and became just humanity, just one country. (If of course we are not force in the quite possible 1984 "future" as many politicians/companies seem to want)
btw. I also don't believe they put a foot on the moon. Why they where unable recently ?.
On the other hand with the dispersion a laser has, how is that something arrives to the moon and comes back ?, maybe that mirror arry is really big :-? (I didn't look for it) Maybe someone knows... :-? :-?
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hppacito: You're entering risky territory here...
:-D :-D :-D
I tried the moon conspiracy theory and was mauled to within an inch of my life!
On the subject of laser reflection however, I watched some guy in the supermarket scanning barcodes and wondered how exactly does the laser 'read'?
Is there a seperate diode in there with 'read' in mind, angled so as to receive the reflected beam out of the main laser... or does the laser pulse (send-receive-send-receive)?
:-)
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I tried the moon conspiracy theory and was mauled to within an inch of my life!
Yes, yes, I read the whole thread, but I still believe they didn't. We will see.
Those bar code scanners has a laser emitting diode, a mirror (sometimes a real mirror, I mean glass with metallic coating, other times a polished metal plate.
The beam is reflected in the mirror and thus projected to the scan area. The mirror moves in a between certain angle to project the beam over a surface. Old models (10 yrs or so) used motors to move the mirror. Newer models, otoh, use an electromagnet to force magnetic attraction-repulsion over the metal plate, and so move it, and (they) can do it faster.
The bar-code to scan reflects the light over a linear ccd, where as you know, you get back where the light was reflected and where not.
(Most Symbol models work like that).
There are some other without laser, just with a row of leds and a linear CCD. Those are far cheaper, but also have a fixed read length.
The ones that have just one led and one photo-transistor are the optical pens.
If you modulate the laser beam you can recover your information after some hops (reflections), that is not a problem !
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hppacito wrote:
btw. I also don't believe they put a foot on the moon. Why they where unable recently ?.
Can you explain when you think we tried to recently, apparently a bunch of us missed it. If you dont believe we made it to the moon, you're an idiot, and you need to explain which Apollo mission began the fake, theres a fairly comprehensive list on the front of this thread.
On the other hand with the dispersion a laser has, how is that something arrives to the moon and comes back ?, maybe that mirror arry is really big :-?
5 Reasons we know we went to the Moon (http://www.thursdaysclassroom.com/15mar01/proofpositive.html)
Under reason 5 above, you can find out all about the Arrays, how they are used, and how they work.
-Tig
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I grew up slightly too late to see the glories of the Apollo project.
Such a monumental undertaking cost the US government $100bn+ during the 60s and whatever the shady objectives of cold war one-upmanship or the dark past of some of the participants it was the last good thing that humanity did.
The fact that no-one's been back since is because the Apollo project was unsustainable, hugely expensive and had little potential for resulting in a permanant manned presence in space. The same reason exists why it took forty four years (1961 - 2005) between a state funded manned spaceflight and the very first privately funded venture.
My own father was approached during the design of Apollo (his field is instrumentation), as were many hundreds of British engineers. Apollo was designed from the ground up, each piece of wire, each rivet and each moving part (numbering into the millions) was designed by a human being, in Imperial mesurements and in the space of a few brief years.
Hoax my ass.
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[X-Files theme tune]
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm
[/X-Files theme tune]
Interesting the bit:
"In a television program about the hoax theory, Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of 10 astronauts and of two civilians related to the manned spaceflight program as having possibly been killings as part of a coverup."
Maybe what the engineers were working on was in fact the ICBMs...
:-D
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ICBMs were in existence long before manned spaceflight. Soviet Sputnik/Vostock craft were put into orbit by adapted ICBMs and US Titan rockets were also built for launching nuclear warheads - indeed, German V2 rockets can be considered the grand-daddy of the mighty Saturn V.
With a 100 tonne payload, the Saturn V was more than capable of putting something in orbit around the moon.
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100 tonnes? That's pretty amazing...
I'm sure I read the Arianne 5 and those Boeing/Mcdonald Douglas rockets can go as far as 10 tonnes.
What do the modern Russian ones carry?
What I found interesting about the Space Shuttle was that when they test the engines there is so much hydrogen released that the test site generates it's own rainclouds!
:-D
Britain should never have scrapped it's Blue Lightning program in the 60s. I only discovered a few months back that we had launched 600 'Skylark' rockets filled with God knows what from a secret site in Denmark... better if we'd sent a man into space rather than given the clowns at MI6 a better looking glass.
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I'd have to say that the Saturn V was the technological achievement of the last century and for once something so awe inspiring wasn't built with the express aim of killing other human beings.
I recall a quote in "Moondust" saying that even if the Saturn V had a 99% reliability rating of all it's components at launch, as many as 3000 would be expected to fail!
That suck a massive device managed a 100% success rate of all it's most vital componets a grant total of 11 times (Apollo missions 8 - 17) plus the Apollo/Soyuz linkup is frankly staggering.
A good number of British scientists worked on both Saturn and Apollo too.
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by PMC:
A good number of British scientists worked on both Saturn and Apollo too.
A bad number of Nazi scientists worked on them also. And I doubt they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts...
:-D
I must say that a great deal of the suspicion that falls on NASA is due to the generals who wield the whip. They 'contain' information on grounds of national security when it could be of vital interest to mankind.
NASA should be a public limited company in the spirit of Wall Street where people can buy shares in missions. Not some federal military quango who's better ideas get poached for weapons systems.
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Hyperspeed wrote:
A bad number of Nazi scientists worked on them also. And I doubt they were doing it out of the goodness of their hearts...
The many British (and Canadian) scientists and Aerospace engineers working on Apollo were there because the USA had systematically applied political pressure to the goverment of the UK to dismantle Britain's aircraft industries. The Brits - like the Germans also - were there because they were out of a job.
Yes, some of the German scientists were unapologetic Nazis, but not all. It would be churlish to tar all of the German scientists with the Nazi tag as membership of the SS and Nazi party was required in order to gain career advancement furing the war.
I must say that a great deal of the suspicion that falls on NASA is due to the generals who wield the whip. They 'contain' information on grounds of national security when it could be of vital interest to mankind.
NASA should be a public limited company in the spirit of Wall Street where people can buy shares in missions. Not some federal military quango who's better ideas get poached for weapons systems.
NASA is a civillian agency, but is constrained by the military and politics too. Remember the shuttle? The early concepts were far removed from what we actually got - not because the technology wasn't there but because the shuttle's design was subject to certain military criteria too. How do you think that many of the USA's more sophisticated Spy Sats got there?
Similarly, NASA's work in advanced aerodynamics also pays dividends for the military too.
Despite the cynicism and the fact that out of twelve men who walked there, only one was a boda fide scientist ("Jack" Schmitt) the moon landings remain for the finest hour of mankind for the last half century - and briefly re-ignited the spirit of adventure in humanity that's become so jaded thanks to a culture of cynicism, litigation and mean mindedness. For that I'd happily pay my share of the $12 per head that Apollo supposedly cost the American taxpayer.
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Hrrm, agreed on all points...
... except I have this feeling in the back of my mind that NASA's budget comes from the USAF. Not sure.
I remember seeing a lot of NASA experiments that involved rockets hung under the B52, radio controlled passenger airliners, jumbo jets with huge laser generators and even talk of using the new generation of space shuttle to drop solid metal bombs from orbit (they wouldn't need explosives due to the velocity they'd be travelling at!).
Then there's this 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' thing and the fact that shuttle pilots train in the airforce...
I wonder why the Russians never kept their cloned Shuttle going though and how many times it flew (if at all!).
I saw a TV documentary once where the Concorde designers decoyed the Russian espionage by substituting the formula for Concorde's tyres for the recipe for chewing gum.
They still managed to make 'Concordski' though...
;-)
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Hrrm, agreed on all points...
... except I have this feeling in the back of my mind that NASA's budget comes from the USAF. Not sure.
No, NASA has its own budget.
Then there's this 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' thing and the fact that shuttle pilots train in the airforce...
JPL was founded as part of California Institute of Technology in the 1930s and is a NASA labratory and the shuttle pilots arent trained by the Air Force. Given the candidates for shuttle pilot need over 1000 hours of jet flight time most have spent some time in the Air Force or Navy (the most likely place for a US citizen to get 1000 hours of flight time piloting a jet).
I wonder why the Russians never kept their cloned Shuttle going though and how many times it flew (if at all!).
Burn threw on the first flight (unmanned) it never flew again.
-Tig
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by Tigger:
No, NASA has its own budget.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/nasa
"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which was established in 1958 [1], is the agency responsible for the public space program of the United States of America. It is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research."
So it has it's own budget yet "is also responsible for... military aerospace research"
Hmmm... a "civilian agency" conducting military research... isn't that was Cyberdyne Systems did before it let Skynet do the dirty work?
:-D
I bet most of the Pentagon spy satellites have been launched under the auspices of 'global warming research' or 'gathering information on solar activity'.
There seems to be underlying aggresion in government run space agencies. Only yesterday Israel launched a spy satellite (surprisingly from a Russian rocket) to spy on Iran. Japan launched a spy satellite to keep an eye on North Korea and the US sends spy satellites to watch everyone.
Britain just enjoys making more craters on Mars, France likes a good 'ol fireworks party...
Noone seems to be doing anything particularly interesting these days - and by that I mean MANNED!
Bring on private space exploration, the garage built orbiters!
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(http://img271.imageshack.us/img271/1779/11402008547319qb.jpg)
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btw. I also don't believe they put a foot on the moon. Why they where unable recently ?.
Money
why we never tried to go back?
we didn't find any klingons. ;-)
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Turambar: That cat looks suspiciously like Maximillion from The Black Hole!
(http://members.tripod.com/RoBoJRR/Movie Robots/max.jpg)
:-D
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Hyperspeed wrote:
Turambar: That cat looks suspiciously like Maximillion from The Black Hole! (http://members.tripod.com/RoBoJRR/Movie Robots/max.jpg)
:-D
lol!
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Poor kitty looks less than amused with his choice of headgear!