Why No Moon Bases?

[Tyger]

Curious. I know there are theories about aliens that keep us from the moon - but seriously!

We're going to fly all the way to Mars? But no Moon base? No massive Space Station - not just a duct-taped-together Russian/US series of tin cans? What's going on?

I admit to being woefully, inadequately, read-up on this aspect of modern culture/society. In the mid-70's we (the US) 'lost' the Vietnam war, saw a President resign in disgrace, had an Oil Embargo, entered a recession, de-funded NASA - were we just all tired after the tumult of the 60's? Had that generation gotten absorbed into marriages, home-owning and raising families?

What happened to the Moon? Even if the plan got de-railed, why hasn't it been resuscitated as an idea? It was suppose to be the staging-area for trips to Mars - and now we are by-passing it? Why? Is it really to do with a loss of vision at a national level - for the US anyway - and Russia for obvious reasons stemming from 1989 onwards.

Any thoughts?

 

[Charlie Prime]

What happened to the Moon?

It served its purpose. Military contractors made untold billions. Resistance to the Vietnam War was delayed.

Fear is a more powerfully motivating emotion than Pride. Today we have the Existential Muslim Threat to terrorize Good Citizens into dutifully filing their 1040's (...now with added HVE™ homeland Jihadi John goodness!)

They trot out the Space Frontiersman program every once in a while to fire up the Good Citizens' national pride.

You will hear it again as the 2016 political theater gets into full swing.

 

[Jeff Crowell]

Money.

Pure and simple. It's very expensive to send astronaughts and equpiment, and build and maintain structures in such an environment and there is nearly zero ROI.

Money and the lack of motivation we experienced within the 50's through the 80's, have nearly stopped all development towards serious space travel. There's no conspiracy, it's just expensive and there's just no real reason to go there any more.

J.

 

[Charlie Prime]

Haha. When has Washington D.C. ever stopped doing something because it was "expensive".

 

[Tyger]

Money. Pure and simple. It's very expensive to send astronauts and equpiment, and build and maintain structures in such an environment and there is nearly zero ROI.

Money and the lack of motivation we experienced within the 50's through the 80's, have nearly stopped all development towards serious space travel. There's no conspiracy, it's just expensive and there's just no real reason to go there any more. - J.

Charlie, I could have bet on your response. I understand there are conspiracy theories of all stripes - like we've been 'warned off ' the moon by the aliens - all of that.

Jeff, something similar crosses my mind, too. We were all fired up for the moon because we were in a 'space race' with the Russians. Sputnik really did put the fear of god into the West.

People, too, cannot absorb how traumatic the 60's into the early 70's were with all the assassinations in the US. When a President resigned and we finally withdrew from Vietnam we (US) were changed, exhausted. The 'Love Generation' were turning 30 and onto 'real life'.

The Space Station, though, was suppose to be the 'next stage'. The Space Station was suppose to be the docking station and launching pad for the moon and Mars and beyond. It all got plowed under - defunded. It's all to do with money and the break-up of the Soviet Union (no competitor)?

I guess it's as simple as you say: "it's just expensive and there's just no real reason to go there any more." The 'space race' is no more. Yet Mars seems to be looming - with the strange proviso that whoever is sent will be going on a one-way mission. They are even recruiting the men and women that would go. Why? Without a Space Station - without a base on the Moon - all these steps that would make a sling-shot to Mars and back much more 'sensible' - survive-able.

At least that's what my Science Fiction Fan-Heart believes.

 

[Tyger]

What's also interesting is the films coming out of Hollywood - no more Sci-Fi stuff a la Star Wars. It's not the 'Final Frontier' anymore. (Rather we are getting Vampires and the Walking Dead. )

In fact, the last really big budget film was - imo - a seriously cautionary tale. 'Gravity' with George Clooney. If any film has depicted the fragility of the human being in the inhospitable void of space, it is that film -

But then there is this, of course -

 

[manxman]

And this one from Dons thread, the one you replied to first.

It obviously set you thinking about the moon, hence this thread, and you gauging the replies before revealing your thought's fully.

Your Mr logical side is having a mini crisis.

 

[Constance]

Money.

Pure and simple. It's very expensive to send astronaughts and equpiment, and build and maintain structures in such an environment and there is nearly zero ROI.

Money and the lack of motivation we experienced within the 50's through the 80's, have nearly stopped all development towards serious space travel. There's no conspiracy, it's just expensive and there's just no real reason to go there any more.

There's plenty of reason to think that Luna has been occupied and mined in the deep past by another species of intelligent life and continues to be visited by spacecraft not our own for some purpose. Whether we were 'warned off' Luna or not, I think that the US and Russia learned enough from their Luna, Phobos, and other near-earth observations and explorations to realize it would be foolhardy to set up a moon base at this point in time. The recent observations of Luna undertaken by Japan and China indicate continuing interest in what our species can do with and on the moon. I recently read that besides the obvious usefulness to us of a base on the moon is the ready availability there of vast quantities of Helium 3. This link to a very informative article published ten years ago in Popular Mechanics explains in detail the vital usefulness of Helium 3 -- very rare on earth and plentiful on the moon -- in solving earth's energy crisis without the polluting effects of the nuclear energy we can produce with other isotopes.

This was known before and at the time of the publishing of the article, and even George Bush attempted to reinvigorate moon exploration and the building of a moon base for this purpose, encouraging private corporate investment for this purpose given the inevitable exhaustion of fossil fuels on earth. Corporations are known for operating out of greed in the short term in the interests of an obscenely increasing 'bottom line', but I do not think that was the reason why public-private efforts to build a moon base did not take place (at least to our knowledge). If that project went ahead in secret it implies that there was no reason to fear reprisals from another race occupying the moon, perhaps because they were never there, perhaps because some kind of accommodation was reached with that species to permit our base and mining activities. If that project proposed by Bush was never undertaken, what rational explanation could there be other than that we cannot communicate with the species (singular or plural) occupying the moon and are afraid to risk confrontation with them?

Mining The Moon - Rare Minerals - Helium 3 - Popular Mechanics

 

[Constance]

It's worth remembering that Ingo Swann was employed by one of the security agencies to remote-view alien activities on the moon and made contact with some technicians there who were able to recognize that he had done so. I'll look for and post his account of this RV project.

 

[Constance]

Further to the point, this information from wikipedia's article on Helium 3:

"The primary objective of Indian Space Research Organization's first lunar probe called Chandrayaan-I, launched on October 22, 2008, was reported in some sources to be mapping the Moon's surface for helium-3-containing minerals.[47] However, this is debatable; no such objective is mentioned in the project's official list of goals, while at the same time, many of its scientific payloads have noted helium-3-related applications.[48][49]

Cosmochemist and geochemist Ouyang Ziyuan from the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is now in charge of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has already stated on many occasions that one of the main goals of the program would be the mining of helium-3, from which operation "each year three space shuttle missions could bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world."[50] To "bring enough fuel for all human beings across the world",[32] more than one Space Shuttle load (and the processing of 4 million tonnes of regolith) per week, at least 52 per year, would be necessary.[citation needed][dubious – discuss]

In January 2006, the Russian space company RKK Energiya announced that it considers lunar helium-3 a potential economic resource to be mined by 2020,[51] if funding can be found.[52][53]

Mining gas giants for helium-3 has also been proposed.[54] The British Interplanetary Society's hypothetical Project Daedalus interstellar probe design was fueled by helium-3 mines in the atmosphere of Jupiter, for example. Jupiter's high gravity makes this a less energetically favorable operation than extracting helium-3 from the other gas giants of the solar system, however."

Helium-3 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Tyger]

It obviously set you thinking about the moon, hence this thread, and you gauging the replies before revealing your thought's fully. Your Mr logical side is having a mini crisis.

You credit me with more craftiness than I possess, I think.

I was really wondering. What happened to the vision? It seemed like this chat site should have a plethora of people with interesting perspectives.

For myself - as I have said - I think it's rooted in the tumble of political events - and unfortunate deaths. I do recall that the last Apollo missions garnered less interest, having become a norm. Anyone who has watched a lift-off of a Saturn rocket can't ignore how primitive the technology is - how wasteful of fuel for a burp. The cost-analysis - I would agree - tipped the scale.

But also, we had been in a competition with Russia - and we won - but they were hardly chasing us there. The vision became the Space Station but somehow the eyes of the public got focussed on earthly concerns. Challenger - but I don't think that did the vision in. It's likely because there was no advancement in the technology getting the shuttle into space. We could land the shuttle - but we couldn't get it up there without prohibitive expenditures of fuel.

Too, our technology of spacecraft never seemed to pass beyond the tin-can stage. Decades and what advances have we made in space accommodations?

 

[Tyger]

There's plenty of reason to think that Luna has been occupied and mined in the deep past by another species of intelligent life and continues to be visited by spacecraft not our own for some purpose.

How 'plenty of reason'?

Whether we were 'warned off' Luna or not, I think that the US and Russia learned enough from their Luna, Phobos, and other near-earth observations and explorations to realize it would be foolhardy to set up a moon base at this point in time.

Was Russia ever seriously in contention for a moon landing?

The recent observations of Luna undertaken by Japan and China indicate continuing interest in what our species can do with and on the moon.

I didn't know that, though Japan seems an unlikely contender. China I could see.

I recently read that besides the obvious usefulness to us of a base on the moon is the ready availability there of vast quantities of Helium 3. This link to a very informative article published ten years ago in Popular Mechanics explains in detail the vital usefulness of Helium 3 -- very rare on earth and plentiful on the moon -- in solving earth's energy crisis without the polluting effects of the nuclear energy we can produce with other isotopes.

Sounds promising. Economics is what drives exploration. It always has.

This was known before and at the time of the publishing of the article, and even George Bush attempted to reinvigorate moon exploration and the building of a moon base for this purpose, encouraging private corporate investment for this purpose given the inevitable exhaustion of fossil fuels on earth.

Didn't know this.

Corporations are known for operating out of greed in the short term in the interests of an obscenely increasing 'bottom line', but I do not think that was the reason why public-private efforts to build a moon base did not take place (at least to our knowledge). If that project went ahead in secret it implies that there was no reason to fear reprisals from another race occupying the moon, perhaps because they were never there, perhaps because some kind of accommodation was reached with that species to permit our base and mining activities. If that project proposed by Bush was never undertaken, what rational explanation could there be other than that we cannot communicate with the species (singular or plural) occupying the moon and are afraid to risk confrontation with them?

Secrets - bases - alien races - too far afield for me. I don't see it. Plus it contravenes the Japanese and Chinese considering explorations. It can't all be in play, seems to me.

 

[Tyger]

It's worth remembering that Ingo Swann was employed by one of the security agencies to remote-view alien activities on the moon and made contact with some technicians there who were able to recognize that he had done so. I'll look for and post his account of this RV project.

I'd be interested in the account.

 

[pong]

Putting a base on the moon takes ambition, wealth and determined leadership. That's why the Chinese are headed there, maybe in this decade.

 

[Tyger]

Putting a base on the moon takes ambition, wealth and determined leadership. That's why the Chinese are headed there, maybe in this decade.

Can't wait!

 

[boomerang]

Curious. I know there are theories about aliens that keep us from the moon - but seriously!

We're going to fly all the way to Mars? But no Moon base? No massive Space Station - not just a duct-taped-together Russian/US series of tin cans? What's going on?

I admit to being woefully, inadequately, read-up on this aspect of modern culture/society. In the mid-70's we (the US) 'lost' the Vietnam war, saw a President resign in disgrace, had an Oil Embargo, entered a recession, de-funded NASA - were we just all tired after the tumult of the 60's? Had that generation gotten absorbed into marriages, home-owning and raising families?

What happened to the Moon? Even if the plan got de-railed, why hasn't it been resuscitated as an idea? It was suppose to be the staging-area for trips to Mars - and now we are by-passing it? Why? Is it really to do with a loss of vision at a national level - for the US anyway - and Russia for obvious reasons stemming from 1989 onwards.

Any thoughts?

Where is the grand vision indeed ?

Just an intuitive feeling-- But I think the manned space program lost widespread support because such endeavors operate in a realm so rarefied that the great majority of tax payers feel no emotional connection to it whatsoever. Manned spaceflight is by its very nature an undertaking for a small cadre of the intellectual, military and political elite. Unless and until spaceflight can be made accessible to a greater percentage of society, and assuming enough people find it to be a positive experience, I doubt the current situation will change. Add to that, of course, escalating exponential costs "per mile" for sending humans ever further into the cosmos.

This could conceivably change due to a technological breakthrough making spaceflight cheaper. The most likely contender would seem to be controlled fusion. Or perhaps the Chinese or some other nation will undertake more elaborate versions of our political vanity missions of the sixties and seventies. If there's a not-so-dim lining, it's the increase in capabilities of autonomous of semi-autonomous unmanned explorers of the near future.

 

[Tyger]

Everything Wrong With Gravity - With Neil deGrasse Tyson

Published on Jun 3, 2014
Gravity had such specific science-related sins, we thought it wise to bring in someone who knows TONS more than we do about science, Mr. Neil deGrasse Tyson himself. Yep, that's really him.

 

[Constance]

How 'plenty of reason'?

The best of it was presented in that two-hour documentary in which Don Berliner was involved, which we discussed here at length after its broadcast several months ago. I remember that you did not find the evidence assessed in the doc to be persuasive. I did, and more where that came from. Maybe someone knows and can recommend the best book on the subject of anomalous structures on the moon? I'd like to hear such recommendations.

Was Russia ever seriously in contention for a moon landing?

I don't know. I'd guess that once the US had gotten there first in the 1960s 'space race' the Russian space scientists turned to other projects. Their Phobos research, for example. And of course they participated with the US in 'Apollo 18' and in 'Apollo 20', and then in building the International Space Station.

 

[Constance]

I'd be interested in the account.

Here's a summary:
Secretly Spying on the Moon | Mysterious Universe

Jim Marrs's account:

“Ingo Swann Views Activities on Moon
By Jim Marrs, Author of Alien Agenda and Crossfire

Remote viewing is the term coined by New York City scientist Ingo Swann, and used by the CIA and U.S. Army to describe a psychic method of acquiring information on persons, places, and things by means other than the normal five senses. Swann, who helped develop this technology at Stanford Research Institute, was also one of its most able practitioners. According to his 1998 book Penetration, Swann was discreetly approached in 1975 by a super-secret group within the federal government, who operated almost like the fabled Men in Black. He was taken to a secret underground base, where he was asked to perform remote viewing. Although never informed of his target, Swann quickly realized he was viewing objects and activities on our Moon. He saw "towers, machinery, lights of different colors, strange-looking buildings. Bridges, a lot of domes, things like saucers with windows ... stored next to crater sides, sometimes in caves, sometimes in what looked like airfield hangars. Long, tube-like things, machinery, tractor-like things going up and down hills, straight roads extending some miles, obelisks which had no apparent function ... large platforms on domes, large cross-like structures." His mind was boggled at the sight of lights and activity on the Moon’s dark side - rows of tall stadium-like light stands providing a greenish illumination, large structures, big as a 40-story building, and naked workers.

"I saw some kind of people busy at work on something I could not figure out. The place was dark. The 'air' was filled with a fine dust, and there was some kind of illumination - like a dark lime-green fog or mist. The thing about them was that they either were human or looked exactly like us, but they were all males as I could well see, since they were all butt-ass naked. I had absolutely no idea why. They seemed to be digging into a hillside or a cliff," Swann recalled. He could not comprehend what he was seeing, but Swann knew one thing for certain - whoever was in charge up there was not friendly to us and had warned us off the Moon! Now before we rush to conclude that Ingo may have played fast and freely with the truth in his account, understand that he was an integral part of one of the most sensitive and classified government scientific programs of the past 30 years. Everyone involved, including Swann, was subjected to the most strenuous mental and psychological testing. The CIA, Army, and DIA continually funded the top-secret remote viewing program for more than a quarter of a century, through five separate administrations, both Democratic and Republican. Furthermore, the Army and DIA used military-trained remote viewers in operational missions to spy on the Soviets and others. Remote viewing, when applied by trained practitioners using tested methodologies, must not be discredited. Then there’s the matter of Swann’s feedback, a small gesture on the part of the secret government agency to let him know his viewing was on the right track. His feedback was to open a Pandora’s Box regarding UFOs and alien activity on the Moon.”


and a comprehensive overview of Swann's psychic, psi, and remote viewing career:

Ingo Swann: A research overview
Extract:

"The Research Work of Ingo Swann
A 32-Year Overview

Since 1970, Ingo Swann has worked with over 38 cutting-edge researchers in the fields of Parapsychology and cognitive perception, with an additional 14 projects governed by non-disclosure agreements.

His early 1970-1972 work with parapsychology researchers based in New York produced results that attracted international attention and acclaim. By 1973, with thousands of experimental trials counted up, he was broadly noted as parapsychology's most tested "guinea-pig."

However, he is best known for his long-term association with Dr. H.E. Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). This work (between 1972 and 1988 in the field of remote viewing) achieved high luminosity because of sponsorship by U.S. intelligence and military agencies. Through these years, hundreds of thousands of experimental trials contributed to increases of knowledge that had not been attained elsewhere. . . ."

 

[manxman]

What is your opinion on Swann Constance.