See a slide show of the new moom rocket system

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9402542/dis ... enumber/1/

My opinion of this waffles considerably. In general, it pisses me off! It's piss-poor Apolo all over again, but without the old-school can-do attitude. Seriously! There are no new ideas here! It's all the same old, same old. One would think for the amount of money being put into it, more and better could be done.

On the other hand, I've read quite a bit on the new moon race. And, well, I feel like cutting them some slack. Considering the unimaginable amount of red tape that is required of a government agency, they're not doing poorly for what they have. Push comes to shove, and this is the cheap way of doing things.

In the end, I'm not excited about this new moon project.

Been there, done that. What will we learn from revisiting the moon that we haven't already learned? I'd rather they focus their resources on a manned mission to Mars or something.

Mars is good but the moon first.

Recently, water ice deposits were discovered in permanently dark areas near the moon's poles. The surrounding mountain peaks are bathed in near-constant sunlight. This terrain is one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the solar system. The potential for economic explosion, scientific discovery is staggering.

The polar ice can support human life, both as water and as breathable oxygen derived from it. We can also use the hydrogen and oxygen extracted from water as rocket propellant. With launch costs approaching $50,000 per pound to low-Earth orbit by shuttle, one can marvel at the value of over 10 billion tons of water ice located in the lunar polar regions.

By developing the infrastructure for operations on the moon, we obtain routine human access to geosynchronous orbit (GEO), the 23,000-mile high zone where many communication satellites orbit.

Why is this important? The next generation of comsats will be enormously heavy, complex machines, requiring megawatts of power and maintenance by people. Such satellites will be needed as demand for bandwidth, the prime commodity of the 21st century information society, increases exponentially.

By going to the moon and mining the abundant water ice at the poles for rocket propellant, we will be able to access GEO with as much machine and human capability as is required to build, service, and operate the comsats of the new century. Such capability is worth literally trillions of dollars.

A return to the moon offers many scientific opportunities. The geological processes that operate on rocky bodies throughout our solar system have occurred on the Moon. We can study impacts, volcanism and the deformation of the moon’s crust to understand better those processes on the other planets.

The moon is also a superb platform for astronomical observation. It has no atmosphere, a cold, dark sky, a fourteen-day "nighttime," and a seismically stable landscape, enabling the use of very sensitive instruments. The moon's far side is permanently shielded from the radio noise and static of Earth, permitting observations in totally new parts of the radio spectrum.

By returning to the moon, we will learn to live and work in space. We can acquire the skills needed to survive off-planet and prepare for human travel beyond the moon. Such experience includes not only testing equipment and techniques but also understanding the social complexities of humanity’s first foothold on another world. It makes sense to learn these undoubtedly difficult lessons on a planet only three days from Earth, rather than on one requiring a year for return.

that's btw. the reason why the germans plan to go up on moon someday soon (yeah, I didn't believe it myself!)

KOB is right. Every word of it. But the real reason to goto the moon is the same reason to goto Mars: it's cool! ... I proclaimed to the universe I would go to Mars when I was 9 and I've followed all the logical reasons why we should go. And at 25 another american (I was in Russia at the time) with the same dream told me why he was going to Mars: it's cool. The reality is it wont happen -- really happen -- unless it excites. And all the logical reasons in the universe (and KOB demonstrated there are many) wont change that.

Mike demonstrates this quite well. He's obviously interested in space exploration and everything that is connected to it. If he had to give it some thought, I'm sure he could have told you all about why going to the moon was a good idea. But his first, visceral reaction was: been there, done that, who cares? (Frankly, Mike, I'm surprised.)

And my response, too: bad design, bad design! Linch 'em!

Frankly, as true as everything KOB has said is, this method of going about it is BS. The throw-away paradigm is dead. Time to invent something new. Blackhorse, for example, would work quite well and so would a number of other approaches. I can sit here and make arguments in all directions and split hairs, but it comes to this: it's poor methodology and it simply isnt *exciting*! ... Still, in that this is what has been chose, I hope it does, indeed, happen.