The New Frontier
There is an article in Yahoo News delineating a vote in the House of Representatives funding President Bush`s proposed return to the Moon and possible Mars mission. It`s refreshing to see some forward thinking in Congress, but I`m not going to hold my breath waiting for the next Moonshot. America is not what it was, and I doubt that Congress will fund this project to completion. Still, hope springs eternal, and a renewed interest in space is an encouraging sign.
The Space Shuttle was developed to be a delivery truck; it was supposed to be used to haul building materials into orbit for the construction of way-stations and large satellites. The original idea was to build a manned booster which would fly the Shuttle to the top of the atmosphere then land on an airstrip while the Shuttle continued on into orbit. The Democrat controlled Congress under President Malaise, Jimmy Carter, cut funding so Nasa substituted a throwaway solid-fuel booster (inflating the cost of launches in the long run) and scaling back on planned uses for the orbiter. The Shuttle was supposed to be the workhorse for developing infrastructure, for building orbital stations which could be used for stopovers on trips to the Moon (which, it was planned, would have permanent settlements) and for exploratory missions to Mars and elsewhere.
Part of what makes spaceflight so heinously expensive is that everything has to be done from Earth. To send a mission to Mars, we must first launch a vehicle from Earth`s surface into LEO (low Earth Orbit) at a velocity of 5 miles per second, then we must wait for a course window to open (if you are going to hit an object millions of miles away, you have to fire at precisely the right moment; this is called a course-window) and launch at the precise moment, driving the speed of the spacecraft beyond 7 miles per second (Earth`s escape velocity). This is a difficult, tedious, expensive process-especially for manned spaceflight. It would be far easier to dock with a space station, send your shuttle back to Earth and board a specially designed spacecraft which could be assembled in orbit, and could even be constructed from materials send from the Moon (which has an escape velocity of a little over a mile an hour rather than 7.) Spacecraft require propellent, which means MASS. Far better to bring your propellent up from the Moon than from Earth; this greatly reduces cost, and is much more efficient, but it requires a permanent manned presence in space.
Which is something that is needed at any rate. What will we do if a large asteroid, say one over 20 miles in diameter, is on a collision course with the Earth? Orbital weapons won`t do diddly; we will have to send spaceships to rendezvous with this body and these ships will have to bring adequate equipment to move this big sucker. Remember, this thing will be moving at up to 40 miles per second! It will wipe the Earth clean of us if we don`t divert it`s orbit, and as things stand there is no way we can do anything about such a catastrophe. We have to have people in space; more than the few we have occupying that white elephant called the ISS.
Beyond Armageddon, we should want to settle the Solar System regardless. Part of the American psyche yearns for a frontier; a sparsely settled place where pioneers can build and create. Even if most Americans will never settle on the frontier, the fact of it being there acts as a psychological pressure valve. ``I can always leave this miserable place and head for the frontier`` used to give hope to many Americans. The driving force in America until the 20th Century was Manifest Destiny; the concept that we settle the wilderness of the American Continent until we filled it from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This was a powerful motivation, and was a large part of what gave our nation vigor and drive. We need that. Should we lead the settlement of the Solar Sytem we could have that again.
And it would be a far larger frontier than the piddling Great Plains; there are five full-sized planets which could be settled (the Moon, Mars, Ganymede, Callisto, and Titan) easily, there are several others which may be habitable with increased technology (Mercury, Europa, and Triton), there are thousands of asteroids and moonlets which could be hollowed out and rotated for gravity, and we could build literally millions of free-floating space colonies. We could settle lava-flow tubes on the Moon (some of which are 50 miles wide and hundreds of miles long) and live exactly as we do on Earth, except we would be SAFER under 200 feet of lunar regolith. If we can find enough nitrogen we may be able to terraform Mars-thicken the Martian atmosphere until we can walk around outside without any special protection. It may eventually be possible to do something similar with Ganymede and Callisto. (Europa is too deep in Jupiter`s radiation belt.) We could build a new civilization in the Solar System, and we wouldn`t have to displace any aboriginal population (and besides, those sexy moon-maidens would be very popular with those lonely male astronauts!)
The point is, we have been goofing around in space for 45 years, and have done very little in the way of infrastructure. Critics complain that we have no reason to go to space, since there is nothing there and we can do what we are doing quite well with unmanned probes and the like. This is akin to saying that we had no reason to send Europeans to America because there was nothing there. You go, you settle, you build, and then there is something there. That is how Mankind has traditionally spread (can you imagine the first Eskimos in America?) and that is the calling of civilization. Consider Genesis1:28 ``God blessed them, saying ``be fertile and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it..`` We venture forth with Divine Charter, seeking to settle Creation upon God`s command.
We have wasted enough time.
The Space Shuttle was developed to be a delivery truck; it was supposed to be used to haul building materials into orbit for the construction of way-stations and large satellites. The original idea was to build a manned booster which would fly the Shuttle to the top of the atmosphere then land on an airstrip while the Shuttle continued on into orbit. The Democrat controlled Congress under President Malaise, Jimmy Carter, cut funding so Nasa substituted a throwaway solid-fuel booster (inflating the cost of launches in the long run) and scaling back on planned uses for the orbiter. The Shuttle was supposed to be the workhorse for developing infrastructure, for building orbital stations which could be used for stopovers on trips to the Moon (which, it was planned, would have permanent settlements) and for exploratory missions to Mars and elsewhere.
Part of what makes spaceflight so heinously expensive is that everything has to be done from Earth. To send a mission to Mars, we must first launch a vehicle from Earth`s surface into LEO (low Earth Orbit) at a velocity of 5 miles per second, then we must wait for a course window to open (if you are going to hit an object millions of miles away, you have to fire at precisely the right moment; this is called a course-window) and launch at the precise moment, driving the speed of the spacecraft beyond 7 miles per second (Earth`s escape velocity). This is a difficult, tedious, expensive process-especially for manned spaceflight. It would be far easier to dock with a space station, send your shuttle back to Earth and board a specially designed spacecraft which could be assembled in orbit, and could even be constructed from materials send from the Moon (which has an escape velocity of a little over a mile an hour rather than 7.) Spacecraft require propellent, which means MASS. Far better to bring your propellent up from the Moon than from Earth; this greatly reduces cost, and is much more efficient, but it requires a permanent manned presence in space.
Which is something that is needed at any rate. What will we do if a large asteroid, say one over 20 miles in diameter, is on a collision course with the Earth? Orbital weapons won`t do diddly; we will have to send spaceships to rendezvous with this body and these ships will have to bring adequate equipment to move this big sucker. Remember, this thing will be moving at up to 40 miles per second! It will wipe the Earth clean of us if we don`t divert it`s orbit, and as things stand there is no way we can do anything about such a catastrophe. We have to have people in space; more than the few we have occupying that white elephant called the ISS.
Beyond Armageddon, we should want to settle the Solar System regardless. Part of the American psyche yearns for a frontier; a sparsely settled place where pioneers can build and create. Even if most Americans will never settle on the frontier, the fact of it being there acts as a psychological pressure valve. ``I can always leave this miserable place and head for the frontier`` used to give hope to many Americans. The driving force in America until the 20th Century was Manifest Destiny; the concept that we settle the wilderness of the American Continent until we filled it from the Atlantic to the Pacific. This was a powerful motivation, and was a large part of what gave our nation vigor and drive. We need that. Should we lead the settlement of the Solar Sytem we could have that again.
And it would be a far larger frontier than the piddling Great Plains; there are five full-sized planets which could be settled (the Moon, Mars, Ganymede, Callisto, and Titan) easily, there are several others which may be habitable with increased technology (Mercury, Europa, and Triton), there are thousands of asteroids and moonlets which could be hollowed out and rotated for gravity, and we could build literally millions of free-floating space colonies. We could settle lava-flow tubes on the Moon (some of which are 50 miles wide and hundreds of miles long) and live exactly as we do on Earth, except we would be SAFER under 200 feet of lunar regolith. If we can find enough nitrogen we may be able to terraform Mars-thicken the Martian atmosphere until we can walk around outside without any special protection. It may eventually be possible to do something similar with Ganymede and Callisto. (Europa is too deep in Jupiter`s radiation belt.) We could build a new civilization in the Solar System, and we wouldn`t have to displace any aboriginal population (and besides, those sexy moon-maidens would be very popular with those lonely male astronauts!)
The point is, we have been goofing around in space for 45 years, and have done very little in the way of infrastructure. Critics complain that we have no reason to go to space, since there is nothing there and we can do what we are doing quite well with unmanned probes and the like. This is akin to saying that we had no reason to send Europeans to America because there was nothing there. You go, you settle, you build, and then there is something there. That is how Mankind has traditionally spread (can you imagine the first Eskimos in America?) and that is the calling of civilization. Consider Genesis1:28 ``God blessed them, saying ``be fertile and multiply; fill the Earth and subdue it..`` We venture forth with Divine Charter, seeking to settle Creation upon God`s command.
We have wasted enough time.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 7:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home