Is a Space Station More Cost-Effective than a Moon Base?

[turbo]

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/05/moon-base.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/12/061204-moon-base.html

Theres 2 links for you to look at.

Uhh, neither of those address shielding from solar radiation, nor do they give even cursory attention to the costs of getting adequately-shielded vehicles or temporary habitats to the Moon, or the costs of sending short-term missions there to man the stations. Those are not practical proposals, nor do they reference such proposals - they are pie-in-the-sky articles written for public consumption, and they ignore basic engineering practicalities. It's all well and good to give a name to a theoretical project and promote it in the popular press, but not at the expense of ignoring basic engineering and physics. Tell the public "We're going to the Moon" and then tell some NASA engineers. Their reactions will be a bit different, I guarantee.

 

[Stratosphere]

Uhh, neither of those address shielding from solar radiation, nor do they give even cursory attention to the costs of getting adequately-shielded vehicles or temporary habitats to the Moon, or the costs of sending short-term missions there to man the stations. Those are not practical proposals, nor do they reference such proposals - they are pie-in-the-sky articles written for public consumption, and they ignore basic engineering practicalities. It's all well and good to give a name to a theoretical project and promote it in the popular press, but not at the expense of ignoring basic engineering and physics. Tell the public "We're going to the Moon" and then tell some NASA engineers. Their reactions will be a bit different, I guarantee.

I just gave them as a link to show you that NASA is planning for a moon base. I didn’t put them up there to explain HOW they were going to do that.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/why_moon.html
If you don't believe the other two links, how a bought one directly from NASA?

 

[turbo]

Well, here is another one.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/GES_FAQ.html

It's all just cheerleading. No feasibility estimates, no engineering studies, no cost-benefit analyses (not even an OOM estimate of project costs), just a bunch of people saying "we want to go to the moon, and this is something we might be able to do when we get there." This is not a project - it is not even the beginnings of a project.

 

[Stratosphere]

Well, here is another one.
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/GES_FAQ.html

It's all just cheerleading. No feasibility estimates, no engineering studies, no cost-benefit analyses (not even an OOM estimate of project costs), just a bunch of people saying "we want to go to the moon, and this is something we might be able to do when we get there." This is not a project - it is not even the beginnings of a project.

It is not yet a project yet but it will be in the future. They are developing the spacecraft for going to the moon. They are beginning preparations for starting the project.

 

[turbo]

My point was (and remains) that there are always going to be public-relations program within NASA to drum up support for imaginary "feel-good" projects that never have a snowball's chance in He** of getting funding for even the preliminary engineering studies. This is because the simple mass-lofting costs associated with manned missions are already well-understood and they are prohibitive compared to robotic/remotely commanded mechanical probes. Mission-costs can be kept under control by utilizing multiple fly-bys to keep fuel requirements in check, but at the cost of time. You can't do this with manned projects, nor do you want to do Solar fly-bys with humans in that little can. Also, we don't much care if the robotic probes come back to Earth, so we won't need to loft the extra fuel, secondary launch vehicle etc, to get those probes back. We can't be quite as cavalier about manned missions. We need dramatic breakthroughs in propulsion, fuel efficiency, and shielding before we can contemplate more manned missions beyond Earth orbit.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of robotic missions in the pipeline. Do you have an idea how long GLAST was in the pipeline as a serious project with engineering, sensor selection, etc in progress? Even then it was projected to launch in 2005, and that slipped over and over again.