On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun

Grok Headline matches for On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun

To the Moon and on to Mars

To the Moon and on to Mars 01/18/2004 07:05 AM
I have been watching to see how public opinion would fall in President Bush's plan to return to the Moon...

Moon, Mars and Beyond

Moon, Mars and Beyond 06/18/2004 05:06 AM
Moon, Mars and Beyond
http://www.moontomars.org/

The President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond. This site gives the latest reports, data and current information on the President's Commission "Moon, Mars and Beyond". This has been added to Astronomy Resources Subject Tracer™ Information Blog.

Back to the Moon, to Mars and Beyond

Back to the Moon, to Mars and Beyond 01/16/2004 01:00 PM
Bush's well-leaked call for a serious expansion of human space exploration deserves support. He sounded just the right notes, including this so-true line: "We do not know where this journey will end. Yet we know this: Human beings are headed into the cosmos."

new moon and Mars missions

new moon and Mars missions 01/09/2004 10:10 PM
Man on Mars From The Moon .. New York Times .. ruimtevaart

nytimes.com/2004/01/09/science/09SPAC.html?hp
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Going Back to the Moon and Mars

Going Back to the Moon and Mars 05/01/2004 02:30 PM

Preview of Moon-To-Mars Report

Preview of Moon-To-Mars Report 06/11/2004 04:05 PM

Bush to Announce Missions to Mars, Moon

Bush to Announce Missions to Mars, Moon 01/10/2004 06:11 AM
To the moon, Alice! (And then, on to Mars) .. space speech next Wednesday

space.com/missionlaunches/bush_mars_040108.html
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Bush's Vision of Moon & Mars Missions

Bush's Vision of Moon & Mars Missions 01/10/2004 03:19 PM
UPI says that next Wednesday Bush will share his space plan to push robots. Bush wants to send American astronauts (humans) back to the Moon, create a moon base and eventually send humans to Mars and even nearby asteroids. Even though this plan may be decades away, more affordable robots will also be a big part of the plan allowing humans to explore other worlds in tandem with robots. The price tag could be in the $130 to $240 billion dollar range a year and even more in total! As one could imagine Nasa is probably getting excited at the money that may be coming their way since in years past they have had to endure drastic cutbacks. Of course some people think that Bush is doing all this just to shure up his election. Also, with 2/3rds of all craft heading to Mars ending in failure, many people don't believe sending humans to Mars will ever pan out.

Moon missions could be step to Mars
(USATODAY.com)

Moon missions could be step to Mars
(USATODAY.com) 05/20/2004 07:18 AM
USATODAY.com - Astronauts could go to the moon for as long as 90 days in the first step toward reaching President Bush's goal of sending a man to Mars, NASA says.

Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report

Book Review: Moon-Mars Commission Report 06/17/2004 11:24 AM

"CNN.com - Bush to seek manned flights
to moon, Mars - Jan. 9, 200..."

"CNN.com - Bush to seek manned flights
to moon, Mars - Jan. 9, 200..." 01/10/2004 09:33 AM

Bush To Announce Manned Trip To Moon,
Mars

Bush To Announce Manned Trip To Moon,
Mars 01/09/2004 10:12 PM
Slashdot Jan 9 2004 3:12AM ET

"Bush to Announce Ventures to Mars and
the Moon, Officials Say..."

"Bush to Announce Ventures to Mars and
the Moon, Officials Say..." 01/10/2004 09:33 AM

Bush Sees Moon As Test for Mars Mission
(AP)

Bush Sees Moon As Test for Mars Mission
(AP) 01/11/2004 10:27 PM
AP - The Bush administration is looking to the moon as the perfect launch pad and testing ground for future space flight, a place where communication with Earth is easy and low gravity makes for lighter launches.

CNN.com - Bush to seek manned flights to
moon, Mars - Jan. 9, 2004

CNN.com - Bush to seek manned flights to
moon, Mars - Jan. 9, 2004 01/09/2004 10:10 PM
Bush to propose manned missions to moon, Mars .. space exploration initiative .. planned moon mission .. announce a plan .. :

cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/01/09/bush.space/index.html
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WaPo article strongly hints that our
President may suggest another mission to
the moon, to precede a manned Mars
voyage

WaPo article strongly hints that our
President may suggest another mission to
the moon, to precede a manned Mars
voyage 12/06/2003 08:36 AM
new big-ticket spending items .. running through their minds .. More

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36960-2003Dec4.html
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Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung
Moon?: Moon: Work with congressmen to
"discard" democracy

Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung
Moon?: Moon: Work with congressmen to
"discard" democracy 03/30/2005 07:38 AM
Sun Myung Moon wants congressmen to "discard" democracy 3/30 .. it's time to end American democracy

iapprovethismessiah.com/2005/03/moon-work-with-congressmen -to-discard.html
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Carol Mosely Braun

Carol Mosely Braun 11/17/2003 07:48 PM
Google Race 2004 .. GoogleRace

googlerace.com
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braun folds, backs dean

braun folds, backs dean 01/16/2004 11:26 AM
both her supporters are expected to pledge their votes to Dean as well

Jay Bryant: The significance of Carol
Moseley Braun

Jay Bryant: The significance of Carol
Moseley Braun 01/19/2004 06:13 AM
Jay Bryant: The Significance Of Carol Moseley Braun (Spot-On) .. A very interesting column by Jay Bryant

townhall.com/columnists/jaybryant/jb20040118.shtml
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"MSNBC - Moseley Braun poised to end
campaign"

"MSNBC - Moseley Braun poised to end
campaign" 01/16/2004 10:58 AM

"Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung
Moon?: Moon: Work with..."

"Where in Washington, D.C. is Sun Myung
Moon?: Moon: Work with..." 03/30/2005 09:20 PM

New NASA Mars rovers dwarf 1997's
Sojourner wheeled Mars robot

New NASA Mars rovers dwarf 1997's
Sojourner wheeled Mars robot 01/01/2004 07:31 PM
Canadian Press via Canada.com Jan 1 2004 5:15PM ET

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit lands on
Mars

Mars Exploration Rover Spirit lands on
Mars 01/07/2004 02:00 PM
We landed on Mars. The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit has captured its first color image of Mars. It is the highest resolution picture ever taken of another planet. Fascinating.

Tonight: Robots on Mars, hunting for
life on Mars?

Tonight: Robots on Mars, hunting for
life on Mars? 01/03/2004 03:22 PM
Magic may happen this evening. The USA will attempt to safely land a scientific golf cart on Mars at about 8.30pm, California time:

Two NASA (news - web sites) Mars landers -- Spirit and Opportunity -- are speeding toward "sweet spot" touch down sites at different, but scientifically attractive locations on Earth's mysterious neighbor.

The opening act in this $820 million drama to place dual robot geologists on Mars is the landing of the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) dubbed Spirit tonight at about 8:35 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (PST). The target: Gusev Crater -- a possible former lake in a giant impact crater on Mars. Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars

Link to news story, Link to NASA Mars Rover home page. (Thanks, John!)

Mars Express Confirms Water on Mars

Mars Express Confirms Water on Mars 01/23/2004 02:20 PM

This mosaic image taken by the
navigation camera on the Mars
Exploration Rover Spirit shows a
panoramic view of the rover on the
surface of Mars

This mosaic image taken by the
navigation camera on the Mars
Exploration Rover Spirit shows a
panoramic view of the rover on the
surface of Mars 01/05/2004 04:57 AM
Mars postcard pictures .. Press release images .. Look, mars

marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20040104a.html
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If they can put a man on the Moon....

If they can put a man on the Moon.... 03/17/2005 03:23 AM

Two talks at MIT this week have been thought-provoking in similar ways.  The first was by a physics professor, Frank Wilczek, who recently won the Nobel Prize for his work on the Strong Force, which holds together quarks to form atomic nuclei.  Wilczek showed some impressive drawings from the latest European particle accelerators in which subatomic particles are smashed together until the quarks start flying out.  (This lecture is available at http://web.mit.edu/nobel-lec tures/.)  John Grotzinger, a geology professor, gave a talk about his experience with the Mars Rovers, which found evidence for flowing water on Mars in sedimentary rocks.  The Rovers communicate with an orbiter and can also communicate directly with stations on Earth.  In Grotzinger's more than one year with the project they've never had a communications problem.

So... if human minds can get together to make ever-better particle accelerators, why can't anyone build a reliable inexpensive nuclear power reactor?  And if the Mars Rovers can call Pasadena, how come nobody with a T-Mobile phone can make a call from most spots on the MIT campus or along Memorial Drive?

In the 1970s people would ask questions of the form "If they can put a man on the Moon, why can't they do X?"  What would be the modern equivalent?  The one great human achievement of our current decade that can be compared to the lack of accomplishment in most bureaucracies?

To the Moon!

To the Moon! 04/09/2004 04:05 PM

Well, maybe not that far. Yet.

The FAA on Wednesday licensed the first private rocket, and has given the green light for a real sub-orbital space flight. Burt Rutan and his California-based Scaled Composites have built SpaceShipOne,< /a> a funny looking rocket-powered plane that Burt hopes will usher in "a renaissance for manned space flight."

The primary goal of SpaceShipOne is to develop opportunities for private citizens to take a sub-orbital excursion:

Our plan involves flight in a 3-place spaceship, initially attached to a turbojet launch aircraft while climbing for an hour to 50,000 feet, above 85% of the atmosphere.

The spaceship then drops into gliding flight and fires its rocket motor while climbing steeply for more than a minute, reaching a speed of 2,500 mph. The ship coasts up to 100 km (62 miles) altitude, then falls back into the atmosphere. The coast and fall are under weightless conditions for more than three minutes. During weightless flight, the spaceship converts to a high-drag configuration to allow a safe, stable atmospheric entry.

After the entry deceleration which takes more than a minute, the ship converts back to a conventional glider, allowing a leisurely 17 minute glide from 80,000 feet altitude down to a runway where a landing is made at lightplane speeds.

Additional incentive for the project is the $10 million X-Prize, which is a contest of sorts to help create a space tourism industry, which will hopefully drive innovation in the field of space travel. Thus far the history of space flight includes only government-funded projects, but with tight budgets and political bickering over funding of these projects, their future is dubious.

The solution? Privatize it. So far the XPrize has 24 entrants from seven countries competing. The rules are pretty simple; the prize goes to the first privately-funded group that builds and launches a spaceship able to carry three people to 100 kilometres (62.5 miles), returns safely to Earth, and repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks.

Looks like Rutan et al will take it. They just completed their second successful test flight today.

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To the moon

To the moon 01/16/2004 11:04 AM

Bush Outlines Plan for 2015 Moon Landing is the first thing that President Bush has proposed that I'm actually in agreement with (well that's not true, I supported his State of the Union proposal to send millions to Africa for AIDS, but last I heard, that money still hasn't been sent). I've always been sad that we haven't returned to the moon since December 1972 -- nearly my whole life! And the thought of renewed exploration of the moon and then Mars thrills me, maybe I can even go! But, I can't help but wonder a) where the money will come from for all this and b) how the heck Bush can actually think he's for smaller government when, according to the Cato Institute, "based on his first three budgets, President Bush is the biggest spending president in decades."

And of course, with Americans carrying record amounts of consumer debt, 17 percent of American children living in poverty, and millions of Americans going without health insurance, returning to the moon doesn't seem like the highest priority.

Meanwhile, on Mars, Sprit's rolled off its landing platform and is ready to begin its roving exploration of the Martian surface. Woo hoo!

To the Moon 1.0

To the Moon 1.0 02/17/2004 11:51 PM
Icons of man’s journey to the Moon.

The man on the moon

The man on the moon 06/02/2004 02:27 AM
Moon Walk 1835 -- Was Neil Armstrong Really The First Man on The Moon? The Europeans did not arrive in American till nearly the end of six thousand years; this time was necessary for them to carry their navigation to such perfection, so as to cross the ocean. The people of the moon know already, perhaps, how to make little flights in the air, and at this time may be exercising themselves. When they shall be more able, we may see them.

fly me to the moon...

fly me to the moon... 01/16/2004 11:27 AM

Finally the long-rumored announcement from the Bush administration happened yesterday, and the New York Times has both an article and analysis (more coverage from CNN, the Washington Post 1, 2, 3, and space.com). At first I was excited, since as I've expresse d before I wholeheartedly support spaceflight. True spacefaring abilities is be among the short list of things mankind should strive to achieve in this century. (Along with tending to some...err... tiny problems we still seem to have when taking care of our home planet).

The plan is (apparently) to phase out what's left of the Shuttle fleet (STS, or Space Transportation System). There are three Shuttles left: Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. (an early model of the orbiter, the Enterprise, only performed tests flights). Additionally, NASA space science programs will be downsized, including cancellation of further servicing to the Hubble Space Telescope. The STS phase-out would be complete by 2010 (which would also be the "date of completion" of the International Space Station), and the new transportation vehicle would be ready by 2014.

And herein lies the first problem with this plan. Are we seriously saying that the US will stay out of space for four years? I find this very hard to believe, considering that the Chinese are certain to have made some progress by then on their own goal of landing on the moon. (And let's not forget Russia...).

After the new launch, a lunar base would be established, "at most" by 2020, and subsequently used as additional research, development and launch platform for launching a manned Mission to Mars.

This "schedule" seems to me slow, and with many of its targets are so far off that (as the NYTimes analysis makes clear), easy to derail. Not to mention that the announcement provided basically no new funding for the program ($1 billion, plus the money that would come from phasing out the STS fleet).

A big factor in this seems to be "safety". For example, the NY Times analysis mentions that the shuttles have been "prone to catastrophic failure". This statement appears to imply that other space vehicles have not been prone to catastrophic failure. Mmm. Let me see. The Shuttle has flown over a hundred missions (STS-107 was the last flight of the ill-fated Columbia) with exactly two catastrophic failures. In contrast, the Apollo program flew less than 15 manned missions (with a few more unmanned) and it had two massive failures, the first in Apollo 1 (which killed the crew during a test) and the second with Apollo 13, which barely made it back to earth. The number of Soviet failures at the same time is difficult to know with a high degree of confidence, but no one thinks that it was a walk in the park. The Soviet Union, after all, never managed to put a man on the moon, and Soviet technology, though constantly a bit behind the times, was never that bad.

This reminds me of one of Steve Buscemi's lines in Armageddon: "You know, Harry, we're sitting on 4 million pounds of fuel, one nuclear weapon, and a thing that has 270,000 moving parts built by the lowest bidder. Makes you feel good, doesn't it?"

Setting aside the nuclear weapon for the moment (Flying to Mars and beyond may well involve some sort of nuclear- or even antimatter-powered spacecraft), this is one of those "funny 'cause it's true" jokes.

What I'm saying is: I don't get it. Can't they get astronauts to fly? What's the problem? If they can't find anyone, sign me up! But of course, they can get astronauts to fly. They would, under whatever circumstances and whatever risks. But of course this whole obsession with safety is something that has been growing and growing in the Western world, with the US "leading the way" but with Europe particularly in the same boat. Apparently, people are just not supposed to die anymore.

And what about the technology? Does it really take more than 10 years to create a new moon crew transport vehicle? Of course not. Our science and technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since the 70s, particularly computer technology which is crucial to this whole endeavor. As the Washington Post notes:

Bush has outlined a tortoise-like pace, dictated by severe budget constraints, that allows a full decade just to develop a vehicle that would, once again, deliver people to the moon -- something Apollo engineers accomplished, starting from scratch, in about eight years.

The problem is not technology, it's political will, and funding. In fact, this new project is a mirror of something that was proposed ten years ago, which went nowhere, as one of the articles from the NYT describes:

In 1989, in a speech honoring the 20th anniversary of the initial lunar landing, the first President Bush proposed that the nation establish a base on the Moon and send an expedition to Mars to begin "the permanent settlement of space." He set the Mars goal for 2019 but the effort soon fizzled when the cost estimates hit $400 billion.

In today's western culture (but it's really happening all over the world) with our instant-satisfaction, one-click-shopping, celebrity-obsessed and 24-hour-of-irrelevant-news media, it's hard to think that popular support will keep steady over the course of the 15-25 years required for this project.

I must say, though, without cynicism, that I hope I'm wrong. I really, really hope that the US can stick with it. It's the one country that has the knowhow and the resources (and, at times, the spirit) necessary to pull it off. And for all the criticisms, it has maintained a continuing space program, to its credit. Does anyone think that the International Space Station would be anything but a blueprint by now if it wasn't for the time, money, and energy (however misdirected) that the US has spent on it?

And, by the way, why does the US have to do this by itself? The Chinese are moving forward, but if they keep at it there will be questions as to how much international aid they need, as this article from the economist notes. And, where's Japan, where's Russia? More importantly, where's the EU? There's been lots of talk about the potential world power the EU can become. But instead of talking about worthy goals, like using the European Space Agency for a daring multinational space exploration program, we keep discussing agricultural subsidies and whether one country has more votes than the other. It's not of course that those are not important issues, but there is zero attention, money, or "political capital" put forward for anything other than those things. I mean, Germany, France, the UK, and all the other great countries. Come on! Europe has to stop running scared from its past of internicine warfare and truly look forward to the future. The US can't be left alone holding the bag with this.

I suddenly think of part of a Sagan quote I posted sometime ago:

Spaceflight, therefore, is subversive. If they are fortunate enough to find themselves in Earth orbit, most people, after a little meditation, have similar thoughts. The nations that had insituted spaceflight had done so largely for nationalistic reasons; it was a small irony that almost everyone who entered space received a starting glimpse of a transnational perspective, of the Earth as one world.

We are not that far away. We can only hope that we, as a society, can for once look just a little beyond our noses and truly make it happen.

Fly Us to the Moon -- All of Us

Fly Us to the Moon -- All of Us 01/16/2004 11:26 AM
President Bush wants to establish a permanent lunar outpost as part of a revitalized space program. Well and good. But don't turn the moon into an extension of Fortress America. Welcome the world, or deep-six the plan. Opinion by Tony Long.

The Man and the Moon

The Man and the Moon 05/04/2004 10:32 PM
I'm Congressman Danny K. Davis, and I approved this crowning of the messiah. [more inside]

Dreams of the Moon

Dreams of the Moon 01/04/2004 04:37 PM

Once in a Blue Moon

Once in a Blue Moon 07/09/2004 10:05 AM

The phrase refers to the second Full Moon occurring within a calendar month and it's happening on 31 JUL. Its rarity is about every 2 1/2 years, i.e. once in 30 occasions. Get the 411 on this crumbly Bleu Cheese source at [NASA]

Soyuz To The Moon?

Soyuz To The Moon? 08/02/2004 10:50 PM

That mystifying moon

That mystifying moon 07/06/2004 01:54 AM
USA Today Jul 6 2004 6:06AM GMT
Grok Description matches for On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun
GrokA matches for On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun

On to the Moon, and to Mars, via von Braun

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: