"Apollo on steroids" - NASA

[Almost Yearly]

Forgetting about the more pressing issues on this planet for a second, what practical use is there in putting men on the moon for six months? I'm struggling to come up with anything that could be achieved that'll be of any practical use.

They just said on the radio that there were "vast quantities of aitch three" hanging about in the moon soil. I thought they meant triangular hydrogen molecules at first, but then they said whatever it was might be useful for cold fusion if we ever got that far, or something, so I suppose they meant tritium. Bullshitium more like.

[Cardinal Tit Storm]

...

[Captain Mildred]

Didn't Arthur C. Clark write a short story where someone managed to shoot a giant Coca Cola logo into the night sky from a gas canister on the moon??? I've googled to no avail.

I'm pretty sure that comes from a 2000AD strip. Unless that was ripping off Clark, of course.

[Gazeuse]

Didn't Arthur C. Clark write a short story where someone managed to shoot a giant Coca Cola logo into the night sky from a gas canister on the moon??? I've googled to no avail.

I'm pretty sure that comes from a 2000AD strip. Unless that was ripping off Clark, of course.

I wasn't into 2000AD and it was definitely in a paperback book.

[Morrisfan82]

Look at the last post on the first page. Was that it?

[Gazeuse]

No...I'm pretty sure that it was Clarke...Still Googling!!!

[Suttonpubcrawl]

If memory serves, that experiment was a failure in terms of self sufficiency, and most of the people wound up going nuts and almost killing each other.

Yeah, wasn't one of the big problems that they couldn't produce enough oxygen? I seem to remember seeing some programme where they were describing what it felt like to be living without enough oxygen and they were saying how they constantly felt exhausted and were really depressed all the time.

[Gazeuse]

All I can find is this off of some bloke's blog...

"...Arthur C. Clarke's story about spraypainting a full-hemisphere Coca-Cola logo on the Moon. Except the UN Space Treaty would be toothless after the fact... and no wind problems.

The logo was not spray-painted on the moon but sprayed upward from the moon -- the idea was to make a (sodium?) vapor cloud big enough to be easily seen, but some well-paid joker slipped a stencil into the nozzle."

[Alberon]

If memory serves, that experiment was a failure in terms of self sufficiency, and most of the people wound up going nuts and almost killing each other.

Yeah, wasn't one of the big problems that they couldn't produce enough oxygen? I seem to remember seeing some programme where they were describing what it felt like to be living without enough oxygen and they were saying how they constantly felt exhausted and were really depressed all the time.

Yeah, they eventually had to let more oxygen into the system. On the moon there's a suprising level of oxygen bound in to the regolith. Don't know how easy it is to extract it though.

[Gazeuse]

Ah...I think it's Robert Heinlein's short story 'The Man who Sold the Moon'

[Santa's Boyfriend]

I once watched a really whacked out lecture on video by a guy who was convinced that aliens were amongst us and had been for 50 years, and that the cold war was one big show to hide the fact that Russians and Americans were really negotiating with 2 or 3 alien races, and that we had a joint US-Soviet space base already on the moon when Kennedy made his famous moon speech.

It was all obviously bollocks, but there was one idea that I was quite taken with - he stated that due to depressurisation, similar to what deep-sea divers do in order to go back to the surface, people were able to walk around on the moon and float in space wearing just oxygen masks.  Obviously you'd need some clothes to keep you warm, but is this actually possible?

[Alberon]

You could certainly survive for a limited time in a vacuum (you don't explode like in the Sean Connery film Outland for example), but it wouldn't be pretty.

Your eardrums might burst and so would many veins on your face. Then there's the temperature. You'll either be in intense cold (beyond human limits to survive) or intense heat (ditto). So to transfer from say one ship to another (like in 2001) is possible, but to survive without a pressurised insulated space suit is not.

It might work on Mars on the warmest parts of the planet, but it still wouldn't be pleasent in the slightest.

[Mediocre Rich]

It might work on Mars on the warmest parts of the planet, but it still wouldn't be pleasent in the slightest.

Except you be on fucking Mars!

I thought the idea was that the plants produced the oxygen?  It's a shame it didn't work as I've always quite liked the idea.  Perhaps they could give it another go, but with more plants.

[Alberon]

This is the place that did the experiment "Biosphere 2" which it looks like they're trying to sell off now.

//www.bio2.edu

Wikipedia has this to add on the loss of Oxygen problem Biosphere 2 encountered.

Many suspected the drop in oxygen was due to microbes in the soil. The agricultural, savanna and rain forest sections had all been infused with microbes in order to encourage plant growth. It was now felt that these microbes were consuming too much oxygen.

A problem with this theory was that microbes breathing that much oxygen would also be creating a massive amount of carbon dioxide. Yet this jump in CO2 was unaccounted for in the atmosphere readings. Further investigation revealed that the concrete at the base of the facility had been absorbing the carbon dioxide as it cured. This effect absorbed a large portion of the carbon dioxide being produced by the microbes which in turn had been depleting the facility's oxygen supply.

Because oxygen and other supplies were provided the project lost some credibility.

[mothman]

Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy. It's a virtual how-to blueprint for colonising and terraforming Mars.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

You could certainly survive for a limited time in a vacuum (you don't explode like in the Sean Connery film Outland for example), but it wouldn't be pretty.

Your eardrums might burst and so would many veins on your face.

Well, yes but that's surely without depressurisation - as in getting in a pressure tank and spending 5 weeks or whatever adjusting like they did in The Abyss.  What I'm asking is whether it is possible to decompress (or whatever it's called) to the point that this doesn't happen.

[Derek Trucks]

Fuck it, I can't resist it.....

A moon landing that going to last for 6 months?  Man, that's one expensive film set.

Maybe this will give Channel 4 an idea? "Day 24 in the Big Brother 19 house, and the housemates are in for a surprise journey"

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I'm frankly disappointed by this news.  I had hoped to see man land on Mars during my lifetime.  Now they're just going to recreate something that was done before I was even born.

[All Surrogate]

Well, yes but that's surely without depressurisation - as in getting in a pressure tank and spending 5 weeks or whatever adjusting like they did in The Abyss.  What I'm asking is whether it is possible to decompress (or whatever it's called) to the point that this doesn't happen.

Well, I think that to live you must have certain gases dissolved in you blood and the fluid in tissues, and these would boil off in a vacuum.  We can depressurise to above a certain pressure, but not below.  There is the additional problem of radiation, which would drastically increase the rate of cancer and probably lead to tissue breakdown, if you managed to live on the surface of the moon for a while.

[Harfyyn Teuport]

I'm frankly disappointed by this news.  I had hoped to see man land on Mars during my lifetime.  Now they're just going to recreate something that was done before I was even born.

Well, there's still time - when are you scheduled to die?

[Santa's Boyfriend]

Well, I think that to live you must have certain gases dissolved in you blood and the fluid in tissues, and these would boil off in a vacuum.  We can depressurise to above a certain pressure, but not below.  There is the additional problem of radiation, which would drastically increase the rate of cancer and probably lead to tissue breakdown, if you managed to live on the surface of the moon for a while.

Yeah, that all makes sense.  Cancer's a real bugger when it comes to exploring outer space, isn't it?

[the hum]

Anybody ever look at the Space Settlement stuff? (http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/gallery.htm)  I think it was an idea that started out in the 70s (I seem to remember some of the pictures in that link appearing in an old school textbook), but of course never got past the concept art stage.  It's all pretty idealistic stuff but I can't help feeling it's got a lot more mileage in it than bothering with the colonisation of the Moon or Mars.

[Frinky]

heeheehee, "rectenna"

[gazzyk1ns]

"Apollo on steroids", that is a bit cack. You'd have thought the phrase of choice would have been "It's a space shuttle for the noughties".

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

I'm frankly disappointed by this news.  I had hoped to see man land on Mars during my lifetime.  Now they're just going to recreate something that was done before I was even born.

Well, there's still time - when are you scheduled to die?

2041 - I'll be 70 then.  I'll die after my birthday.

Natural disasters and terrorists permitting obviously.

[Alberon]

"Apollo on steroids", that is a bit cack. You'd have thought the phrase of choice would have been "It's a space shuttle for the noughties".

It is a very lazy journalist scum type comment. It's why I liked it. Though surely it should be more like an "Apollo program for the noughties" though since it won't launch until 2010 at the earliest perhaps "Apollo program for the teens" is better?

[All Surrogate]

Anybody ever look at the Space Settlement stuff? (http://members.aol.com/oscarcombs/gallery.htm)  I think it was an idea that started out in the 70s (I seem to remember some of the pictures in that link appearing in an old school textbook), but of course never got past the concept art stage.  It's all pretty idealistic stuff but I can't help feeling it's got a lot more mileage in it than bothering with the colonisation of the Moon or Mars.

That's really inspiring.  I just worry that we'll wreck any chance of setting that kind of thing up by mismanaging resources here on Earth.  Part of me wants NASA to concentrate on a space elevator rather than these inelegant rockets, even if it means keeping out of space for a while.  I suppose I just want to see a truly massive erection.

heeheehee, "rectenna".

[gazzyk1ns]

Re: Alberon

Hehe yeah, I was just commenting on what was, as you say, a lazy and bizarre (and funny because of that) comment.

[Alberon]

I think there's a good chance that whenever the moon missions happen, and definitly with any Mars mission, it'll be mulitinational. China is pushing its manned space programme just like Russia and the US did back in the sixties, as a prestige project. To show the world it is becoming a superpower. America will not allow itself to fall behind. Though I do feel they'll end up working together, with ESA and Russia tagging along.

Does a Mars mission have a reasonable chance of sucess though? Sure, you could make it safe if you threw enough money at it, but for the money the world is prepared to spend could it be done? Even if you spin the spaceship there is going to be muscle and bone wastage on the voyage there and back. Then there is the threat from radiation which will be a huge problem even if they have a shelter for the storms the sun will throw their way. Then they have to land on Mars stay there for months and then lift off again. That has never been attempted on a body that big even by an unmanned probe (though NASA has plans for a soil return mission).

Maybe they'll be ready by the time any Mars mission takes off in thirty years, but it is still going to be a huge risk.

[terminallyrelaxed]

It'll be more Red Planet than Mission To Mars, though, hopefully.