Monday, January 21, 2008





To hell with this "return to the Moon" shit -- let's go to the 'roids!

(Thanks: Steve S.)

2 comments:

Alfred Lehmberg said...

This is what I was talking about here, actually:

http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/2006/10/flying-moon.html

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Anonymous said...

Yes, I think the article makes some very good points, and that it may be more appropriate to eliminate the proposed "moon base" for now, and first concentrate instead on asteroid visits/landings, as that would serve three purposes more useful than initially having a moon base, which never did seem like a real logical prospect or jumping off point for the future manned Mars mission(s):

1) Landing on asteroids gives us the tools and experience to land on both Mars and Phobos/Diemos sooner than would otherwise be possible if we first try to establish a moon base, which would be horrendously expensive and possibly impractical and/or difficult to supply and sustain, and--

2) Would give us potentially very valuable experience and tech to accomplish asteroid and small moon landings sooner that we would have otherwise, which would not only accelerate our ability to do the Mars planetary mission(s), but also check out some of the rather interesting anomalies on Phobos, for example (the "tower"), and have the added benefit of providing the means and required experience of being able to land on an asteroid, which, considering the very real potential hazards of NEO's, might give us the ability, if one was detected beforehand long enough, to deflect it's potential direction if we calculated one might otherwise cross Earth orbit or hit us. It would be nice to have that deflection capability.

3) Also, it seems mining critical minerals from selected asteroids would be more productive and cost-effective than trying to do similar mining of same valuable materials from the moon.

All in all, seems like a win-win situation, and more important than a having a moon base. If we can accomplish prospects 1 and 2 first, and get to Mars earlier than now scheduled, that would be great, and then we might want to afterward consider establishing a moon base if that seems to still be worthwhile, all variables considered in the financial and timeframe equations involved.