Why isn't the ESA going to the Moon and Mars?

[Mikemcc]

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Long deep space missions will not be efficient to get resources. But feel free to provide a plan first. It might actually change some minds.

Not efficient yet. If we wait until the time when it becomes efficient we are unlikely to have the time and resources to find out how, hence my reference to the 6Ps.

 

[Rasmus]

Not efficient yet. If we wait until the time when it becomes efficient we are unlikely to have the time and resources to find out how, hence my reference to the 6Ps.

Again, doing something that we're not good at in the hopes that eventually we learn it and then the stuff we actually wanted to learn is not a plan. it's panicking, at best.

 

[Cuddles]

So while this has a great many people sad why isn't the ESA taking advantage of the situation and just saying, "fine, you won't do the grand stuff...well we will!"

You seem to be missing quite an important point - why NASA is not going. Because no-one thinks that it's worth the time, money or effort to do so when those resources could be spent on other things. If it's not worth it for NASA, why do you think it's worth it for anyone else?

As for "taking advantage" of the situation, what does that even mean? If the US were planning trips, how would that prevent anyone else from planning their own? The rest of us don't have to wait for NASA to give up on an idea before we can try it ourselves.

Surely the member states have the money.

Are you serious? Recession, almost total collapse of some members' economies, massive spending cuts all around and particularly in science. And you think countries have plenty of money to spare on billion pound projects that no-one particularly wants to do in the first place?

 

[Cainkane1]

India may beat us to it. They say they are interested not only in going to mars but to set up a colony there. They did land a probe on the moon rather recently. Japan may go there before NASA gets around to it. Heck China may do it.

 

[a3sigma]

India may beat us to it. They say they are interested not only in going to mars but to set up a colony there. They did land a probe on the moon rather recently. Japan may go there before NASA gets around to it. Heck China may do it.

If we (USA) did it, we'd have to borrow the money from China anyway.

 

[Third Eye Open]

We need to start building a damn space elevator, that's what.

 

[Trakar]

Work in LEO is all well and good but it doesn't help us develop techniques to operate outside the Van Allen belts, develop powerful multi-start engines suitable for heavy load interplanetary flight, deal with fine dust (as present on the moon and mars), and a whole host of other challenges.

Again, none of these require a Moonbase or even a manned moon landing, and the problems and environments of the Moon and Mars are drastically different, with very little crossover applicability in resolution.
We need to get competent at holding our heads up and steady and coordinating our hand movements to what we see, before we embark on crawling, and standing yet alone moving out of the softly netted crib. A good, substantial LEO base of operations gives us the intermediary platform from which to begin thinking about further expansion. It may well take centuries or more before we significantly and permanently expand beyond Earth orbit, what's wrong with that?

 

[Trakar]

It is being worked on.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1894327&postcount=1

(Way old thread, there are more. I just liked and remembered the opening line...)

As far as I know, the main problem here is the rope, since it doesn't exist yet.

But I couldn't agree more, if we want to stay in space, this is the way to go.

We should be approaching material technologies capable of supporting something more along the lines of Forward's Rotovator. While not a true space elevator, it'd still help significantly, at least in creating a fairly steady flow of material out of the atmosphere.

BTW: For those interested and in the Pacific NW of the US, the 2010 Space Elevator conference is coming up in a couple of weeks!

 

[Mikemcc]

India may beat us to it. They say they are interested not only in going to mars but to set up a colony there. They did land a probe on the moon rather recently. Japan may go there before NASA gets around to it. Heck China may do it.

The Chinese are allegedly aiming to build engines with 80% of the thrust of the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10762634

 

[Mikemcc]

Again, none of these require a Moonbase or even a manned moon landing, and the problems and environments of the Moon and Mars are drastically different, with very little crossover applicability in resolution.
We need to get competent at holding our heads up and steady and coordinating our hand movements to what we see, before we embark on crawling, and standing yet alone moving out of the softly netted crib. A good, substantial LEO base of operations gives us the intermediary platform from which to begin thinking about further expansion. It may well take centuries or more before we significantly and permanently expand beyond Earth orbit, what's wrong with that?

We don't have centuries, we're already into a peak oil scenario (hence the deep-water drilling), we have other limited resources - phosphous for instance.

 

[Mikemcc]

We need to start building a damn space elevator, that's what.

We simply don't have the materials (yet) or methods to produce likely materials in the bulk required. Though by my own arguements for manned spaceflight we should still be working towards it!

 

[Trakar]

We don't have centuries, we're already into a peak oil scenario (hence the deep-water drilling), we have other limited resources - phosphous for instance.

Neither of these issues neccesitate a manned lunar base or manned travel beyond Earth orbit to resolve.

 

[SpuriusMaximus]

I'm not sure what peak oil even has got to do with it. It's not like we're going to bring here oil from Mars, because there isn't any. You know, the whole part about not having a thriving fauna over billions of years, to be turned into oil.

And with chemical rockets we're not going to bring it cheaply or in time from 50 light years away either. If oil is your problem, dumping more of it into making and launching lots of chemical rockets is just a way to piss away what we still have faster.

Second, the idea that the only way we could get the right tech is to start a pointless folly right now is silly. Most of what went into rockets so far was stuff which had been developed for civilian or military purposes, not stuff which absolutely had to be researched from scratch for the explicit purpose of reenacting Star Trek.

The rocket that put Sputnik into orbit for example was a big ICBM, not something designed for space exploration. Someone just realized that they had made it so big, for the purpose of hauling a big-ass nuke to America (Russians liked 'em big), that it was powerful enough to put something smaller in orbit.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The rocket that put Sputnik into orbit for example was a big ICBM, not something designed for space exploration. Someone just realized that they had made it so big, for the purpose of hauling a big-ass nuke to America (Russians liked 'em big), that it was powerful enough to put something smaller in orbit.

And actually, an important purpose of early satellites (the only one, in fact, for the first Chinese satellite), was to demonstrate to everyone who understood the implications that you had intercontinental missile capability.

Hans