{"id":4725,"date":"2012-09-01T21:04:07","date_gmt":"2012-09-02T04:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=4725"},"modified":"2012-09-03T11:35:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T18:35:50","slug":"lunar-space-station-vs-asteroid-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2012\/09\/lunar-space-station-vs-asteroid-mission","title":{"rendered":"Lunar Space Station vs. Asteroid Mission"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/48869943#.UELWXqD0SXY\">http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/48869943#.UELWXqD0SXY<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The glacial pace of NASA\u2019s human spaceflight program \u2013even with the glaciers melting- may possibly see human beings leave Earth\u2019s gravitational field in 2025. Possibly.<\/p>\n<p>The missing piece of the puzzle is a radiation sanctuary massive enough to protect a crew from a major solar event on such a journey.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasatech.com\/NEWS\/Nov05\/who_1105.html\">http:\/\/www.nasatech.com\/NEWS\/Nov05\/who_1105.html<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A fairly massive shelter, probably made of RFX1, will have to be available for any deep space mission. But why chase down a boulder? A mission to orbit the moon is a much more worthwhile project.<\/p>\n<p>Why do we have a space station orbiting the Earth instead of the Moon? The answer is money of course. Such a station would not have the protection of the Van Allen belts and would require heavy shielding. The vehicle to insert such a heavily shielded station into lunar orbit and resupply it existed in the form of the cargo version of the space shuttle- called Sidemount.<\/p>\n<p>Sidemount was never funded, and a vast amount of money- over 100 billion dollars- spent on the ISS was essentially wasted on tin cans going in endless circles at very high altitude. It does have a nice window though.<\/p>\n<p>Low Earth Orbit is a dead end.<br \/> We now have the opportunity to launch a station to orbit the Moon in a relatively short time frame using the Delta IV vehicle. But again, the political football that is human space flight is the first to be cut- while cold war monstrosities like the V-22 Osprey and F-35 Stealth Fighter suck up billions and deliver wonder weapons that do not work.<\/p>\n<p>Why are we trapped and going in circles- going nowhere? Along with the trillion dollar war, billions of dollars are.\u2026.missing. Nobody even knows where those billions went.<\/p>\n<p>I know one thing; there went our space program.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2011\/06\/13\/official-billions-missing-in-iraq-may-be-largest-theft-of-funds-in-national-history\/\">http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2011\/06\/13\/official-billions-miss\u2026l-history\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2010\/10\/28\/billions-afghan-aid-unaccounted-audit\/\">http:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/rs\/2010\/10\/28\/billions-afghan-aid-unaccounted-audit\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/08\/30\/military-spending-waste_n_942723.html\">http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/08\/30\/military-spending-waste_n_942723.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/48869943#.UELWXqD0SXY The glacial pace of NASA\u2019s human spaceflight program \u2013even with the glaciers melting- may possibly see human beings leave Earth\u2019s gravitational field in 2025. Possibly. The missing piece of the puzzle is a radiation sanctuary massive enough to protect a crew from a major solar event on such a journey. http:\/\/www.nasatech.com\/NEWS\/Nov05\/who_1105.html A fairly massive [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,43,38,5,15,9,31,8,410],"tags":[133,565,161,100,2128,222],"class_list":["post-4725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-business","category-engineering","category-geopolitics","category-habitats","category-military","category-policy","category-space","category-transparency","tag-colonization","tag-lunar-space-station","tag-politics","tag-risks","tag-space","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}