[FPSPACE] Aviation Week: Moon Stuck

[Edwin Cameron]

Forwarded to fpspace.
   
  From: epgrondine at hotmail.com
To: agzak at optonline.net; fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: RE: [FPSPACE] Aviation Week: Moon Stuck
Date: Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:51:35 -0500
    
Hi Anatoly - 

What the Moon has is location. 

The two things that can best be accomplished from the Moon are Cometary impact detection and SETI.

Now NASA has done everything it can to avoid taking responsibility for dealing with the impact hazard, and is forbidden by law from supporting SETI. 

In response to the impact hazard, at first Griffin supported the lifeboat Mars fantasy. And we're now seeing others trying to use growing awareness of the impact hazard to their own ends, while knowledge of Comet and Asteroid Protection System is suppressed.

There's more to space than manned Mars flight.

E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas


> Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2008 22:04:23 -0500
> From: agzak at optonline.net
> To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
> Subject: [FPSPACE] Aviation Week: Moon Stuck
> 
> I guess this one of those "I told you so" moments :)
> 
> http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0801/18avweek/
> 
> "It's becoming painfully obvious that the Moon is not a stepping-stone for
> manned Mars operations but is instead a stumbling block," says Robert
> Farquhar, a veteran of planning and operating planetary and deep-space
> missions.
> 
> "It just does not feel right. And there's growing belief that, at high cost,
> it offers minimal engineering benefit for later manned Mars operations."
> 
> Those who's been on FPSPACE long enough might remember our little
> discussion, days after VSE was announced:
> 
> http://www.russianspaceweb.com/op-ed_2004_bush_plan.html
> 
> "All the tasks of testing and assembling hardware for Mars exploration could
> be accomplished cheaper and faster onboard the Earth-orbiting space station.
> The construction of the lunar base for the sole purpose of establishing
> rocket-fueling stations and Mars training facilities advocated by the
> administration is truly ludicrous." (published Jan. 30, 2004)