Longer Life for Space Shuttle?

[Greg]

This might bear watching.

CONGRESSMAN UNVEILS PLAN TO DELAY SPACE SHUTTLE RETIREMENT: WASHINGTON - Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) unveiled legislation Dec. 17 aimed at keeping the U.S. space shuttle fleet flying beyond its planned 2010 retirement. The plan calls for giving NASA $3.7 billion designed to make up for past funding shortfalls that he said jeopardize continued operation of the shuttle and timely development of its planned replacement, the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares I rocket.

The new system currently is expected to make its debut in March 2015, some four and a half years after NASA plans to fly the shuttle for the last time. Weldon's legislation, which he plans to introduce in Congress in coming days, would close the gap in U.S. human spaceflights by authorizing "such sums as may be necessary" to fly the space shuttle twice a year between 2010 and 2015.

"My bill plugs NASA's human spaceflight gap and ensures a smoother landing for the shuttle workforce and lift-off for Constellation," Weldon said in a statement released following a Dec. 17 press conference at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex.

(Space.com)

Currently the Space Shuttle fleet is scheduled for retirement. The first to go out of service will be OV-104 Atlantis, which will be retired after its August 7, 2008 flight to the Hubble Space Telescope.

It sounds like a good idea to me. The year 2010 seems like an arbitrary date for retiring the Space Shuttle; but then, I don't know all the thinking that went into choosing that date.

[FredsG]

Greg, I follow most of this as close as you, but have a completely different perspective of where it's all headed. Thanks for the up-dates...

[Miros1]

I agree... how in good conscience can we have people on the space station and only Russian vehicles to get them there and back? Redundancy is good!

[Greg]

It's even odder than that. My understanding is that after 2010 we're not allowed to buy any more Russian flights,which pretty much leaves us grounded until either Orion or something else comes on line.

[FredsG]

Where do you see China's involvement being in all this in the future ...considering all the aspects of the programs problems right now... including the financial one?

[Greg]

I really don't have any idea. I haven't been trying to keep track of what the Chinese are up to these days. I know that they have announced that they are planning a moon program and have done some talking about mining helium-3 from the moon for fusion reactors, but whether there's a major program afoot or one publicity agent reading the Artemis Data Book is anybody guess.

[shorty943]

Good news at least for the shuttle people.

I think the idea of helium-3 mining may need some more thought.
Apparently, though there is proportionately more there than here.
It ain't worth the effort to actually get it home. There is not that much.
Of course this information came from a TV news broadcast, so a pinch of salt needed to taste?

[Greg]

Yeah, it'll be good news if the other folks in Washington like Rep. Weldon's idea. It seems reasonable to me, especially since we're talking about less that 1/1000th of total federal outlays, but others different priorities.

I'm ambivalent about the helium-3 idea. One the one hand, if someone can make it work, it would be a terrific source of energy for the next 10,000 years (assuming 100% of Earth's energy production was converted to He3-deterium fusion). Clean burning, no blowups, no meltdowns, no nuclear waste, essentially zero environmental impact.

But on the other hand, nobody has even managed to get a stable deuterium-tritium fusion reactor to work yet, so we don't know for sure that it's even possible.

Then there's the possible impact it would have on development of communities in the moon. My vision is to turn the moon into a tourist destination. (Laugh not; tourism is the second largest export industry in the world today. Energy is number one.) Lots of very nice cities have been built on a tourist economy, but mining camps seem to rather undesireable places to live.

[shorty943]

You don't hear me laughing. From what the interviewed scientist was saying.
IF, they can get the theory and the practice to gel. The mining operation would be so massive it would be visible from Earth BY THE NAKED EYE.

Umm, not a good thing.

Now, tourism, that IS a good idea.

[FredsG]

There seem to be a few of those projects in the works already (tourism) mostly private funding by some very rich people, but it seems they're always working with other countries on them instead of here in the U.S. We seem to like to discourage private enterprise that would benefit the whole of the country at times...sigh...

[Greg]

Shorty, the idea that someone could strip-mine the moon to the extent that the mine would be visible from Earth--even with the largest telescope on the planet--strikes me as absurd. None of the things built by humans on Earth are visible to the naked eye from even the lowest stable orbit, which is about 80 nautical miles up. Nope, not even the Great Wall of China.

I would guess that the speaker was going for drama more than accuracy when he make that comment.

FredsG, yes, there are several space tourism wannabes scratching at the problem right now. FWIW, my erstwhile employer, Bigelow, is not one of them; but Richard Branson, the Virgin guy, is.

[shorty943]

Greg, this chap was talking of strip mines 100 miles wide.
Dramatics or not, that is big scale.
A really big vivid scar for sure.

Even if you needed a telescope to see it. I like counting the craters inside the craters. I don't want to look through my 4 inch optical telescope (an Optisan 900114II) at a quarry works.
I can see that next door. Without even needing my binoculars.

Now a couple of coloured glass domed tourist\education\research sparkling things. That's different.
That's jewels in the Earth's glorious crown.

Young Sir Richard, is a bit of a "just go and do it" guy isn't he.
Post him your CV Greg.
He seems to get the so called impossible done pretty quickly.
And look like James Bond doing it as well.

[mikedelaney16]

Originally Posted by Greg

It's even odder than that. My understanding is that after 2010 we're not allowed to buy any more Russian flights,which pretty much leaves us grounded until either Orion or something else comes on line.

It might not be necessary to buy Russian flights.

From the ESA website:
At the end of 2008, a Soyuz launcher will take off from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. This will be an historic event as it will be the first time that a Soyuz launcher lifts off from a spaceport other than Baikonur or Plesetsk.

And down at the very bottom:
the launch infrastructure has been designed so that it can be smoothly adapted for human spaceflight, should this be decided upon.

With regard to the shuttle, I would favour extending operations if a proper replacement is commissioned.

Originally Posted by shorty943

Greg, this chap was talking of strip mines 100 miles wide.

It's going to be a very long time before anyone can operate on that scale on the moon.

[shorty943]

Isn't there supposed to be some sort of free trade thing going on between all us buddy nations?
What the hell, lets all build em, and then we can send the great-grand-kids on another land grab race like way back in great-grand-pappies day.

G-day Mike, we haven't seen your words for a wee while.

[Greg]

As Mike said, it will be a very long time before anyone is mining an area 100 miles wide, if ever. Now, let's suppose that some day in the millenia to come, that actually happened, for reasons that will be intelligible only to the people of the future.

Could someone looking at the moon from Earth see it? Well, 100 miles subtends at arc of 1.4 arcminutes at a distance of 238,000 miles, and the naked eye can distinguish 1 arcminute, if there is 100% contrast between the foreground and the background. Which means you might possibly be able to distinguish a dot on the moon, if you have perfect eyesight and knew where to look, and if for some reason they painted the surrounding terrain white and the mine solid black, or vice versa.

There's the rub. If you dig up lunar regolith, what you see beneath it is--you guessed it!--more regolith! The best spots for surface mining are the dark maria, and what you find under the surface is more dark maria. Basaltic soil, mostly.

So my guess is that even if someone were to excavate the surface in a big square 100 miles on a side (that would be more than 6 million acres), you would have a rough time finding it even with a very good telescope under perfecting seeing conditions.

[Greg]

Mike, I don't think it would matter where they launch from. The problem is that the Soyuz is manufactured in Russia. I thinkg it has something to do with the Russians selling arms to folks that the western nations don't want them selling arms to, but we'd need someone who really knows what he's talking about to understand the whole thing. Even then, there's not much we could do about it.