Bill introduced directing NASA to establish a moon base
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
China: 5000 miles
US: 0 miles
There's only so much money. The US needs to build infrastructure, and other things that will grow its economy.
In 2008 it's 0.6% of Fed Budget which is still a lot of roads. But more importantly: The NASA budget is larger than the National Science Foundation budget,[2] but only 61% of the National Institutes of Health budget. NASA does some interesting science but the focus is clearly on keeping the public entertained and not say lowering the cost to orbit which would be of great value.
Now, the technology transfer of government output to the private market, that's where the lowered cost and great value will come to the fore. I'm sure I'll rile the free market feathers by saying this, but SpaceX and Virgin Galactic would not exist without NASA. No way, no how.
Just to get you geeked out about NASA, though, here's a fan-made video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXkuo1yihjs
Jersey Shore-style Fist-pumping science.
The government builds new roads to lower transportation costs.
NASA spent a less than 1 shuttle mission worth of funding to research scram jets over 7 years. Resulting in the X-43 which hit Mach 9.68 using an air breathing engine. , NASA Dryden engineers said that they expected all of their efforts to culminate in the production of a two-stage-to-orbit crewed Vehicle in about 20 years. However, the program was canceled, so, in the end you could be right
Still, scramjet's are one of the few technology's to be able to reduce the cost to orbit to 1/10th - 1/100th of current costs and instead people want to wast billions trying to build a moon base?
PS: The whole point of infrastructure is to lower prices. People could drive across the country before the interstate system, but it suddenly became cheaper and faster in large part because you could avoid stoplights and pedestrians etc.
That has happened occasionally (AT&T), but the more usual situation (Standard Oil, Alcoa Aluminum) is that prices go up, which isn't surprising since the main beneficiaries of "anti-monopoly" laws are the competitors who cannot compete with the "monopolist".
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/spinoffs2.shtml
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2009/pdf/Brochure_09_web....
I would guess that on balance, investments in NASA have resulted in a highly positive (direct and indirect) ROI for America and indeed the rest of the world. Perhaps the benefits aren't communicated as well as they could be.
Faster Network speeds: yes Build more highways: no Building highspeed rail: no Building a better way to transport things: yes building intellectual property: yes
The point is, what sort of infrastructure does the US actually need to build? I personally believe more roads is not one of those things that we should be trying to build. Pretty sure the highway system does an excellent job already.
Have you even been in heavy Traffic congestion? The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that, in 2000, the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion U.S. gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation's GDP. Note: That cost is significantly larger than NASA's ~$19B budget.
PS: Simply building more or wider roads does not automatically remove congestion in the long term. However, mass transit really does help. Just look at how much more people are willing to pay to live near a subway station.
The US does not have, and will never have, an effective high-speed-rail network. Nor does it really need one. You can already get from every city to every other city in a slow convenient way (car) or a fast inconvenient way (plane), and there's no real need for a third method intermediate in speed. Have you ever been at a total loss to figure out how to get from one city to another conveniently? I haven't.
The Chinese government can build high speed rail, cuz it doesn't mind ripping up the houses of hundreds of thousands of people to build dead-straight rail lines into the middle of cities. The US, at this stage, has far too much investment in its cities to rip 'em up just so that I can get from San Francisco to Los Angeles in four hours (instead of seven hours, or one hour).
Beijing to Shanghai is about 820 miles. This will take about 4 hours when the trains comes online in June, a year ahead of schedule.
Are you saying LA to San Francisco is 350 miles and currently a 90 minute train ride (233mph) - contrasted against Beijing to Shanghai (205mph). So the high speed rail in China is slower?
I realize I must have misunderstood something here. Also, I don't know California geography very well, nor the existing modes/means of transportation between those two locations.
Can you clarify the point of your post here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Shanghai_High-Speed_Rai...
There are high speed rail systems that don't involve carving up tons of land, either by building on top of existing right of ways or by building it on pylons to elevate it.
A train might use less electricity per passenger-mile than a car when it's full, but when it's not full its efficiency goes down pretty quick because you're hauling a lot of metal around.
Also there's the fundamental inefficiency of trains: they always go from somewhere that isn't exactly where you are to somewhere that isn't exactly where you want to be, on some schedule that probably doesn't exactly match what you want to do.
The drive is two hours, but a waste of gas and time if you're only going for a weekend. Highspeed rail is the perfect intermediate and at a reasonable price (read: $100 or so round trip) would be well more than enough reason to ditch my car for basically all trips greater than 100 miles.
Just because there are some places in the USA where highspeed rail doesn't make sense doesn't mean that argument extends to the whole country.
What I take issue with is the idea that because other countries have it that the US needs it too. That's a silly argument. Other countries have medieval castles, ubiquitous bidets and abundant kangaroos, but the US doesn't need those either.
(And in fact, only four countries in the world have a high-speed rail network worth a damn -- that's France, Germany, Japan and China).
In the case of the latter, however, I find that those who oppose space exploration in favor of using the funds for the good of humanity now (feeding staving people, building domestic infrastructure, eliminating innumerable other social ailments) are only shortchanging future generations of our children by guaranteeing their extinction. Very smart people have repeatedly warned us that we cannot remain a single planet species and expect a future. I really can't think of anything more important to spend money on than the only technology that will be able to allow our species to survive.
1) the technology we have now is inadequate for serious colonization. we are better off investing in basic science, education, health care, and the economy in general. we have to create the people who will create the science first.
2) NASA is the wrong way to do colonization, it should be private enterprise, which has a much higher appetite for risk.
Cut funding from the military. Entering less wars would also do wonders to your relationship with other countries.
A side note, I picked this up at National Review's "The Corner" blog, which is always entertaining.
[1]http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chinas-train-wreck/20...
We've been to Oregon too, with Lewis and Clark. Fortunately, we went back.
(Edit: clarified LA to Los Angeles)
I get that putting meat on the ground can have benefits that probes don't provide. I also get that we have to move some people off of this rock in case it gets hit by a bus. But doing something because "it's there" won't ever get sustainable colonies, let alone self sufficient ones.
We built a trillion dollar rocket industry so we could blow up the world if the russians invaded europe. Not because we wanted to advance humanity. Not because we really wanted to do something awesome. If you want humans in space en masse you have to come up with a compelling short term reason to do so. Water on the moon doesn't cut it.
What you call "rocks" I call "minerals".
With plentiful materials and energy combined with a more or less static position in relation to Earth (the Earth is always in the same position in the lunar sky), a magnetic rail launch system becomes an easy option. You only have to carry fuel (or engines) if you intend to enter Earth orbit. If a landing is enough, you can aerobrake on Earth's atmosphere and parachute (or glide) down.
NASA is, after all, made up of a vast number of people competing to get their own favourite projects funded. If a directive comes down from on high that NASA's primary goal is to build a moonbase then it means that projects relevant to this goal start getting funded (and that projects irrelevant to this goal get a hasty rewrite to make 'em sound like they're relevant to this goal).
Currently, all of our space vehicles are also built to withstand atmospheric exit & entry. With a space elevator, we could afford to have elevator -> moon or earth-elevator -> mars-moon/station transports that would be much easier to build.
If there is any foolish government project I am willing to put my tax dollars into, it's this.