Oh noes!One of the Brickmuppet's crack team of science babes has come to an astonishing discovery of cover-up and duplicity at NASA!
It seems that NASA's Ares 5 heavy lifter is secretly intended for a nefariously nonlunar purpose!
Selenian Boondocks has the dirt!
What scoundrels!
I'm shocked...just shocked I say!
But I seem to have misplaced my pique.
It seems that lots of the Alt-Space types seem to be very upset that NASA's lunar vehicles are actually optimized for a Mars Direct type mission. I fail to see why this is a bad thing. The NASA plan seems to be to do a few flags and footprints missions and then pretty much turn the moon over to the private sector and big universities.
Then they will focus on Mars, which is a tougher nut to crack, has far more potential and is beyond private efforts for the foreseeable future.
Griffin's proposal for privately operated propellant depots and entrepreneurial ventures in particular gives some indication of where he wants to go...and that seems to be largely out of the way of the private sector....which is a damned good thing if you asked me. :)
UPADATE: Despite the claims of some commenters, neither I nor the science babes were not being misrepresentative in the above post.....However it seems that the posts premise is likely quite wrong.
NASA announced today plans for a moonbase, probably on Shackelton Crater. Here is a PDF. More when I'm not on the way to work.
2 comments:
Oh please, leave misrepresentations to someone good at them, like Mark Wittington. But even if we ignore that what NASA is doing could be done for 1/10th of the price, they are still in the wrong.
Firstly, if NASA only wants to do flags and footprints, like you suggest, it's downright criminal, because they were given very clear direction to establish a permanent base, which is what they are not doing. If I were a CEO and my employees were ignoring my orders and gone with their own thing, I'd fire them.
Secondly, if they want to do Mars, then what in the world are they doing building Ares I? Huh?
What have I misrepresented?
I gave a link to John Goffs excellent blog and said that some Alt spacers were spun-up.
You are most assuredly spun up. :)
Your first point IS valid but NASAs charter specifically says they must facillitate commercial development. Given the large ammount of stuff left behind by the 2-stage landers I could see a base getting set up quickly and then being simply maintained.... expansion and such being in the hands of private enterprise and the NSF. Kind of like an industrial park.
Regards the second booster, it is a rocket in the Saturn 1 class. It might be a hedge, it might be beauraucratic inertia. I'm reporting what Dr Goff reported a NASA official said. Something that gave me quite a bit of hope.
I fail to see where I have misrepresented anything.
Regards actual rocket science: To the extent I know anything at all my fields are oceanography a bit of history and a a smattering of marine engineering.
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