N.A.S.A. has a tradition of producing disposable space exploration items at very high cost. Russian space transporters will take U.S. astronauts to the space station for several years before the Orion spacecraft gets off the ground. N.A.S.A. budget problems are significant with so much money thrown away inn Iraq and Afghanistan because of Federal incompetence at social engineering in adverse environments. They rely on military force instead of intelligence, and that’s the problem with federal; lunar development policy-that is they just are very effective in the Administrative and Legislative branches of government. N.A.S.A. itself is generally capable, but only with adroit mission assignment parameters to start with and reasonable assurance of a continuum of funding. Perhaps we should get Russia and the European Space agency involved right away and try to put some remote construction packages on the moon within two years. Russians are competent at robotic missions. We need something like aluminum log cabins with air locks on the moon-hollow logs with insulation. Food needs to be sent up, solar panels and so forth before astronauts ever arrive.
N.A.S.A. should have overlapping, redundant missions with many elements of interchangeable parts, and they should get started and use whatever spare parts Russia and Europe have right away. Sometimes science needs to follow along with field operations. The Hubble should be retired to the Lunar Colony in a few years. Super-conducting electrical lines to power electric lunar vehicles should be placed. It all works good in the cold and N.A.S.A. needs to get hot on that.
Every planetary landing mission should be packaged in a future shelter module. N.A.S.A. has a leisure chef approach to planetary missions and disdains leftovers or pre-packaged and recyclable shelters because they never found that their very lives and budgets depended on mixed metaphors. When the cold winds of the pioneer days of Mars arrive for federal officials seeking to flee accountability for scarfing taxpayer moneys from offshore accounts to second world nations, or simply receiving mundane corporate kickbacks they will want a place to go quickly beyond reach of extradition…that be Mars. Pirates of government with vast public debt trifles, trillions for ‘too big to fail’ banks and insurance companies and dubious foreign war strategies find it impossible difficult to get three billion for a lunar program, yet three billion for ‘cash for clunkers’ be fine. Well bar d har to that!
The space station and Hubble Space Telescopes are such items, as are the space shuttles-perhaps the prosperous have no concept about building cheap. We appreciate the magneto-plasma engine research and hope that continues…it’s magneto. The new moon colony ahead should not be another flimsy and expensive disposable unit. A high tech tent or a tent covered with dirt isn’t solid enough. It would be possible to build a solid yet lightweight structure perhaps even with robotic assembly before the astronauts arrive. N.A.S.A. engineers on some things are just too high tech for practicality.
Consider the monolithic dome of Italy Texas…it’s a spray on concrete over an inflatable form…that’s a far better direction than is the inflatable tent concept. There is another product used for quick lawn borders that is in effect an instant concrete brick block laid down by a machine fed some powdered, granular dry mix. It just digs a little trench and excretes a nice brick behind as it moves slow along.The block is dry and finished. Such a concept could work for a concrete footing without water on the moon.
The re-bar for the monolithic dome should be a very high strength composite instead of iron of course.
Another good concept is the hollow aluminum log cabin with welded in seals and lunar dirt filled inside the hollow ‘logs’. I understand that aluminum naturally welds in space. Special cargo rafts should be downloaded from orbit with aluminum log cabins for the moon. They could be set on the footings. Temporary inflatable tents could be placed inside some until they are completed.
Some of the cabins or monolithic domes should be set aside for interior excavation downward into the moon for underground facilities over time. The construction of moon cabins could be a separate project that could start immediately. Perhaps the U.S. Lunar Park Service could rent the cabins to those willing to pay a few thousand a night for lodging in the future.
The Hubble Space Telescope is planned to be allowed to burn up in the atmosphere when it’s work is done-why not tow it to lunar orbit and download it on a raft to the New Lunar Camp site to be used as parts for some future semi-pro astronomical facility or maybe to store cheeseburgers in if the lenses are no good? The Space Shuttles should also be delivered in some way to the new Camp Ground for use as spare parts and construction materials if not storage or temporary housing. The waste of N.A.S.A. is egregious and that should stop.
If virtual particles are in some way related to the source of dark energy expanding the Universe’s space-time, if there is a Universe surrounding plenum that attracts space-time in some way with opposite charges and dimensions, matter and forces, and if it is not a mirror image at all of this Universe or any other, it is still no excuse for N.A.S.A. to be wasteful and lethargic just because it has a lot of brilliant astrophysicists without any practical frontier get it done kind of experience (I don’t mean that of the oil oligarchy either).
