Hi Retroman, Well said. Our presents in space should mainly be as a robotic state. We have the shuttle and perhaps will build a refined flight p;atfor with
as good or better reliability for servicing our orbital inventions. These are the reasonable jobs and rational envelope of our need to go into space.
The esoteric concept of solar and extra solar exploration in the interest of expensive gravel ignores the pressing problems here on earth.
Imagine the monorail we could build for those billions? Imagine the whole new alternative energy industry that we can put online 20 years ahead of it's time , saving oil for airtravel where it is needed? I could go on and on.
To waste money on Mars when our rivers go un cleaned and our fisheries disappear is fool hardy. Fix the earth before you scratch the stars.
This is, in fact, the best thing in the solar system.

" Oh...the grass is always greener...in the other lellow's yard.
A little row....we have to hoe..... oh boy, that's hard!
Now, you always see the fine clothes..that the folks have on their backs.
But...you never see the mortgages that are hanging on their shacks! :)
You used to like our little roadter...till the days got dearsey Dan.
And now you say our roadster's just 'An old tomato can' .
But if we all could wear green glasses now.... it wouldn't be so hard.....
To see how green that grass is in our own.......back........yard!

...........an old song for a new day.
Best regards, Dan Bessette

Personally, i dont think its got anything to do with us. Were English.

So, im not interested at all at what the americans are doing.

We are part of the European Space Agency and therefore part of Columbus laboratory project being readied for launch to the International Space Station. In addition to this we were the 6th Nation to achieve orbital capacity after Russia, America, France, Japan and China.

So it does have something to do with the British.

It's not the Russians Americans fear it's the planned Chinese moon advetures. They could expose the American con of all times if the US does not get there before them....

To many years and to much money has been wasted on the Space station which has been a diversion to keep the Russians out of thinking and affording their own moon mission. China's ambitions have thrown a spanner in the works of the American con........

There's no reason to believe the moon landings were a con.

It's a typical conspiracy theory - in other words people came up with the 'answer' first and then selectively used evidence to support it rather than the proper line of investigation where the answer is determined by the evidence.

BTW, Sticks I thought you believed the moon landing hoax theory? Have you changed your mind?

Believing the Americans went to the moon is like believing mount everest can be climbed by a man with no arms.......

The Russians did try and put a man on the moon and if it was for the failure of the N1 rocket they might have achieved it. There is no reason to think that with the advances in technology since the late 1960's that if the N1 rocket design was resurrected and submitted to modern rocket simulation program that the faults in the rocket could be corrected and a successful mission made with the right funding within a few years.

So it is not just China that America has to fear.

China's space program is currently years behind that of America and Russia and although it is catching up it still has away before it can get to the moon. It hasn't even started a design for a rocket that is powerful enough to make the trip.

At least the Russians have made that start.

Referance

Tom Whittaker only had one foot when he climbed the mountian and Erik Weihenmayer was blind when he climb Everest. Then don't forget Kim Hong-Bin, whose hands had been amputated who failed to get the top but did reaching 24,000 feet before he had to give up.

So you never know.

So how did I give that impression :conf:

I post on Bad Astronomy and Universe Today where we debunk these conspiracy theories amongst other things.

Unfortunately no,
the most powerful telescope we have, at the best resolution currently available when looking the moon gives what looks to be a pretty clear of the surface

But Hubble only has a 2.4 metre mirror, and each pixel at the best resolution covers approximately 86 metres of lunar surface, the landers are considerably smaller

The largest telescope will be the Magellan, which which will have a 24.5 metre mirror, made up of seven 8 metre reflectors in sequence - and still to take a picture of the lunar surface where one pixel = the size of the lunar landing craft will take a telescope 4 times the size of Magellan. And one pixel will not be enough to positively identify the object

the best chance of proving and also disproving the hoax is Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2008, although funded in part by the Japanese it will fall under the control of Nasa.

My very short film




Incidentally, during Apollo XI the left a laser reflector on the moon, which they regularly use to bounce lasers off of. I remember on a Channel 5 show how someone from an observatory who sends laser beams up in order to make measurements that moon hoax believers have never spoken to them.

That made me laugh. :wink:

Proof that the moon landings were faked

http://stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_la...n_landings.htm

Surely there can no more doubt - we were duped!!

well that raps that up then lol

Can't remember what I was thinking at that time. According to BAUT I joined in January 2004 a few months after those posts, but my first post there

Looking at my first ever post there I may have been doing my opening Devil's advocate gambit back then as well. (Full Thread)

:blush:

That is the only thing I can think of.

It looks like I was playing Devil's Advocate at the time

I had just transferred from being a Cyber Warrior so was still finding my feet at the Office of the Cyber Devil's Advocate General at that time.

On what basis do you say that we should halve the amounts of space exploration spending? NASA's budget is strained as it is. Any further cutbacks of that extreme nature will either stall robotic exploration or manned exploration indefinately, depending on which is cut. Shouldn't we be cutting back on truly wasteful spending FIRST and then decide how much we can afford to spend on space and everything else? We wated 100 million in UNUSED airline tickets at the federal level between 97 and 03. They didn't even bother to get a refund when it was available. Federal student loan programs have 21.8 billion in defaulted loans and an unknown amount of fraud probably accounts for a large part of this. We know that there are cases of fake students applying for loans and getting them with totally forged documents. Medicare overpays for drugs and equipment so much so that fixing it could save 20 to 30 billion a year without reducing any benefits at all. THAT is wasteful spending, where you don't get anything out of your money. If you cleaned this up it could easily pay for NASA's budget entirely and then some.

I see no reason at all to reduce NASA's budget by a single penny until this and the rest of the completely wasted government spending are fixed. There should be no priority higher than some of the things that are covered by space exploration and technology such as storm monitoring, national security, and planetary defense/NEO monitoring. There should be no higher priority. If you cleaned up the completely wasted dollars, even mostly, then you'd have more than enough money to fund all kinds of feel-good social programs without having to raise taxes nor cut any other useful spending.

I agree messierhunter. When I think about the amount of money wasted on recreational drug taking binge boozing and smoking and all the expence of dealing with the problems they cause it makes me sick to hear people complaining about space research being a wast of money.......

My latest film in this series