FW: [Marxism] Star wars

["Jose G. Perez" <elgusanorojo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Bush Moon-Mars human space exploration plan is a press release, not
a program, just like his Dad's project to go to Mars, which no one
remembers except a few of us space geeks.

Its lack of seriousness is underlined by the lack of any funding
commensurate to the task, and the setting of goals and deadlines so that
all the heavy lifting will have to be done AFTER a second Bush term, if
he gets one. 

The questions were really whether the U.S. would abandon the
International Space Station. It will not. And whether the U.S. is
willing to become completely dependent for an indefinite period on
Russia to supply it and shuttle astronauts and cosmonauts back and
forth. It will. 

The real question before Bush was whether to spend the money NOW to
develop a new vehicle for taking crews to outer space in time to replace
the shuttle, which it is now generally agreed MUST be retired as soon as
possible.

Because the space station modules have been designed to be put in place
by the shuttle, there seems to be agreement to continue to use the
shuttles for this job. Space station construction should be complete as
early as 2008 assuming NASA gets it back in space later this year and no
more fuckups, and Bush didn't project his new vehicle to be operational
before 2014.

What is likely to suffer, and greatly, for the money for studies and
such will need to come from somewhere, are the programs associated with
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, robotic exploration, and
earth observing satellites.

As to a military tie-in to Bush's pretty picture about moon bases and
Mars trips, there would --if it were serious, which it is not-- be
spillover of tech from one to the other. But, for example, the idea
mentioned here of using the moon as a missile base is not that
attractive. Much easier to put the warheads in earth orbit, rather than
having to completely get out of the earth's gravity field, land the
stuff on the moon, then overcome the moon's gravity to get it back to
earth. And overall, human spaceflight is so monstrously expensive and
complicated and fraught with danger that any direct tie in seems
excluded. Anything that soldiers could do in space could be done 10X
more reliably at 1/100th the cost without a human crew. 

I should not say "could be done." It IS being done.

José



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