Back to the Moon!!!

[feedback]

After looking through this thread, the VAST majority of comments are uplifting, and witty. Will everyone please just relax a little?

The site is still a baby, and we are focusing on lots of cool new features that all of you should have fun with...if you can manage to stick around long enough to see them.

We hope to launch Version 1 of our BLOG system by Wednesday, unless something goes wrong when we are testing it tomorrow.

Separately, we are working on a Video Profile feature that might be launched as early as next week. It will allow members to add their own videos to the site. And if you don't want to add a video of yourself, you can still help in a themed video archive section that will be added simultaneously.

Also, we are working on a 'Library' of books and movies, where members will be listed based on what they read and watch...so you can find people who like the same things (and maybe argue with the ones that don't...since that seems to be what gets everyone's blood boiling around here.)

Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know that there are some really fun things in the works.

Try not to kill each other before we launch them.
8)

[cooky37]

Scryer, Fringy, I can't wait to see your blogs. If Swallow and lucy share a he sais/she said blog that will be some fireworks

Will someone shut that man up
NEVER!

[cooky37]

Swallow, Don't leave please. If we don't have people to call foul how will we know where the line is. But, Don't you think you have a bit Of a Feminist Biass?

Don't answer here lets move this to it's own thread. Liet us leave the moon and go to MARS AND VENUS in the general discusion

Will someone shut that man up
NEVER!

[ninjabear]

and here I thought I was the only one.
Sounds nuts but they way they explain, it could possibly work.
Now you just have to be nuts enough to boost nukes into orbit, and we've finally found a constructive purpose for the damned things.

Personally I think there will be a different, more subtle means of propulsion, once we finally crack the problems with String Theory---after all brute force is rarely the right way to go.

[halofan85]

It might sound pretty cool if we return to the moon and build a permanant base there. however, Bush's space vision for "moon, mars and beyond" requires budget cuts for other NASA programs and many cancelations of other space missions. The space science funding would be decreased by 15% and the astrobiology budget will be cut in half (that also involves the SETI instatute.) Missions like the Europa mission, which searhes the possible ocean (and perhaps life) underneith the icey surface, will be killed off. The Terrestrial Planet Finder, that searches for earth-like planets around other suns in 2014 (what i was SO looking forward too) will be killed off.
I think earth and space science should stay in the NASA budget.

[cooky37]

720 days left till the new pres maybe he/she will be more interested in space.
There is still the chance of privately funded space Travel. Any one remember Scavenger 1 with Andy Griffith?

Will someone shut that man up
NEVER!

[ninjabear]

On this week's episode of Nova, they showed people competing in the X-Prize competion to build a "space elevator" (yeah, like that thing Tuvok & Neelix got working in an episode of Voyager). Now that's something I'd like to see but I don't think NASA can do it.
NASA has in very short order become a buracrasaurus; a large, dumb, lumbering beast that does nothing but waste time, eat money and crap red tape.
We need a fresh start, a new approach. If the team behind Spaceship 1 had NASA's budget, in 20 years FOX would be shooting episodes of COPS on the moon---much like the TV movie and short-lived series Salvage, starring Andy Griffith.
Damn I loved that show---"Hey I know, I'll stick a cement mixer on a rocket, fly to the moon and salvage what NASA left behind."
Yes, now that's what I'm talking about, Cookie Monster!

[cooky37]

Maya Kulpa, Maya Kulpa, Maya Kulpa. It was so long that i forgot the title of the show.
yes it is time for space Exploitation to fund space exploration.
can i interest anyone in a condo on the sea Sea of Tranguility

Will someone shut that man up
NEVER!

[ninjabear]

No harm, no foul, Cookie37---but the same sort of commercial spirit shown by the Andy Griffith character in Salvage would be the cure to what ails the space program.

Shake up the engineers and scientists who seem to think the heavens are their private playground, and let's get some venture capitalists in the picture---hey who wouldn't like to send Donald Trump to the moon?
Now that would be an interesting episode of The Apprentice!

I believe NASA is keeping us down---and yes, I would like a condo on the moon, with a nice view of Earth and some lunar mountains.
Trump is a greedy, arrogant, narcissistic tyrant, but he could make the lunar condos happen if there was a profit in it.

[cooky37]

Can we send Trump to Mars and Rosie to Venus
different thread. There is another problem with privatising space, and it will be covered in an upcoming BillyBob Tornton film "Astronaught Farmer"
The Chemicals needed to make Rocket Fuel is controlled tightly for National security

Will someone shut that man up
NEVER!

[ninjabear]

The chemicals in rocket fuel are actually elements.
Hydrogen, perhaps the most common element in the universe and his buddy, oxygen.
Two liquified gases in the biggest Thermos bottle you've ever seen, boost rocketships into space and beyond.

If we could commercialize Space, perhaps we could keep it from being weaponized---then again it'll probably wind up like the Sean Connery film Outland, but still it's worth going.
I'm just waiting for someone to ask the asinine question.

[twincarb]

I first read about project orion in larry niven's novel Footfall ( recommended reading kids) but was never able to find out any info this side of the pond.
Then, drum roll please, i went online and found out the details and my thoughts on the whole idea are simple;
Nice idea if the planet is already frelled up but PLEASE don't leave me behind to cleanup!!!!!


Back to topic, the moon...
When i was very small i was dumped in front of a tv and told, watch this because this is HISTORY happening right now, yes the first moon landing and i have followed space exploration in fact and fiction ever since.
Why has it taken so blasted long to even begin to escape the cradle of mother earth. Simple answer politics have messed up everything and nasa is a prime example of what happens when too much money is thrown at a task.
Where are the people,(is that p.c enough for you bug, only funnin) the mavericks and chancers that make real leaps forward, the big thinkers and the blue sky dreamers , cause they sure as he@@ arn't at nasa. All i can say is got to it and do not mess this chance up as there may not be another.

[ninjabear]

After the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, NASA decided the loss of their "passenger" was unacceptable.
The attitude that this was no place for civilians has prevailed until recently.
Of course during this time Burt Rurtan built a short-range rocket and with a high school dropout at the controls, sent it into space.
Rutan's team recently suffered a major setback, but they have not let it stop them from building a low orbit "tour bus" the rest of us might one day get to ride.
NASA, frelling test monkeys that they are, should have their budget re-appropriated to Rutan, so that he can complete his dream of building his tour bus and hotel in orbit.
People like him are the ones that will get the rest of us to the moon, not the clowns at NASA.

[twincarb]

Damm straight bear, give burt the cash and he, not nasa will get to the moon.
As odd as it may sound i hold nasa in great esteem but as bear said it has become too big and is lost in paperwork and red tape. Too many projects, too little centeral control and a total lack of a coherant direction has ruined a once mighty beast.


1. Farm out or get rid of non-essential projects and return to the core idea SPACE EXPLORATION and get to the moon and STAY THERE.

2. Once a stable lunar base is eatablished then, as arnie once said GET YOUR --- TO MARS. Do the same there and leapfrog across the entire solar system, the asteroids are a untapped storehouse of mineral wealth which will give rise to a new era of exploration and scientific breakthroughs.

3. Only if we as a race begin to move away from this little blue ball will we as a species surivive otherwise all it takes is a small problem and the whole race might just snuff out.

Peace and long life to all.

[ninjabear]

As I read Twincarb's post, I heard the theme from Red Dwarf in my head...cool.
Base, my fat fuzzy teddy bear ass!
The apartment complex should be down the street---or transit tube---from the Wal-Mart, which is across from Pizza Hut. Just a quick jaunt from the movie multiplex, across from the florist and that little diner facing Armstrong Memorial Park. Best cheeseburgers and milkshakes in Luna City, plus a view of that bold first step---NOW THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!