Goldin: humans on Mars, commercial space, NASA leadership

Discussion in 'Science' started by Porfiry, Jan 8, 2001.

  1. Porfiry Nomad Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,127
    <!--intro-->NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin sees human exploration of Mars within the next three decades &quot;and possibly the database in ten&quot;, but suggests the short-term future of commercial space development &quot;is cloudy&quot;. And Goldin says that he does not yet know if he will be reappointed head of NASA by incoming President George W. Bush. <!--/intro-->

    In a wide-ranging interview conducted over two days, Goldin told Ad Astra readers and NSS members his views on his record-setting eight-plus years as NASA Administrator under two U.S. Presidents and his vision for America's future in space. In the interview, to be published in full in the March-April 2001 issue of Ad Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society, Goldin expressed pride in what he described as 'cultural changes' to the civil space agency brought about since taking office in the spring of 1992. &quot;I have removed the shackles from our employees,&quot; Goldin said. &quot;I have empowed them-and they're the greatest.&quot;

    Goldin predicted astronauts would explore Mars within the next three decades, and possibly even some asteroids. &quot;And if there is a reason, we may go back to the Moon,&quot; he added. But he expressed reservations about the short-term prospects for commercial space. &quot;That boom we all expected has gone bust,&quot; he said. As a result, the next generation in human space transportation &quot;will have to be developed by NASA and the federal government over the next decade&quot;, rather than relying on a purely commercial system. &quot;If you would have asked me five years ago, I would have said 'you bet',&quot; Goldin explained. But today &quot;I see a fog in front of me&quot; concerning commercial space. He predicted that a future commercial space transportation industry for humans would be developed &quot;when we lower the cost&quot;, but he could not predict when that would occur.

    And Goldin could not predict the fate of his own administration of NASA. When asked if he would be available for reappointment, his answer was &quot;I just do not know&quot;. He said that he would be at his desk at NASA headquarters &quot;until noon on January 20th (inauguration day for President-elect George W. Bush)&quot;, but after that &quot;who knows?&quot; Goldin said.

    In other areas, Goldin spoke of his loyalty to Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, how he changed &quot;the culture&quot; of NASA, predicted additional space stations would be developed in the future, talked about his emphasis on safety for all NASA employees and projects, and how he keeps a letter of resignation in his desk at NASA headquarters for use if &quot;I was ever pushed beyond what I thought were the right boundaries,&quot; Goldin said.
     
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  3. bradguth Banned Banned

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    Mars is still such a freaking joke, though at least terraforming Venus would have been so much easier 40,000 years ago, as for much of their CO2 count could have been indirectly reduced by the photosynthesis being delivered and/or induced by the likes of Sirius, though too would the environment of Mars benefitted.

    (latest Sirius entry) http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-sirius-trek.htm

    Consider if you well; upon the very nature of any planet capable of hosting a sufficient degree of cloud cover, especially if that cloud cover could be artificially made to include additional filtering agents, such as sulphur. As now you've created a global environmental shield that's not only become nearly meteorite proof but also nicely filtering out a good deal of those bad UV spectrums, but allowing more than a sufficient spectrum bandwidth of 350~450 nm to slip through, giving the much needed surface illuminations while essentially blocking the direct impact of the horrific IR as well as for diminishing the undesirable influx of UV/abc to a point where sufficiently advanced life become survivable, in spite of the horrific side effects of creating a rather massive greenhouse.

    Without such a dense atmosphere and cloud cover, sunrise on Venus wouldn't represent the mere 5% increase in their ambient, but more than likely several hundred percent, creating an intolerable infernal differential that even highly educated folks would be hard pressed to deal with. In addition to those wild thermal variation, there'd be a horrifically wide spectrum influx of solar radiation to fend off.

    If our solar system can manage to host such a clouded planet like Venus, then it's entirely possible that something created and/or modified for the likes of Sirius could have survived in spite of our ignorance.

    BTW; There's still more than a darn good chance of there being other life of some sort existing on Venus: http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-town.htm

    Some good but difficult warlord readings: SADDAM HUSSEIN and The SAND PIRATES
    http://mittymax.com/Archive/0085-SaddamHusseinAndTheSandPirates.htm

    David Sereda (honest ideas and notions of UV energy), for best impact on this one, you really need to barrow or purchase his video tape: http://www.ufonasa.com

    The latest round of insults to this Mars/Moon/Venus class action injury:
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-what-if.htm

    Some other recent file updates:
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-gwb-moon.htm
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-interplanetary.htm
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-illumination.htm
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/gv-moon-02.htm
    http://guthvenus.tripod.com/moon-04.htm
     
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  5. bradguth Banned Banned

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    For more than a couple of decades, I've had little doubt (long before these most recent & spendy Mars probes) that free/unfrozen water and various forms of life once existed upon Mars, and to think if some of those lifeforms were terraform assisted, as then of natural evolution by way of whatever Mars had to offer on its own is not a factor.

    There's seemingly plenty of folks stipulating that we should be going in person to Mars, actually there seems to be thousands of them, including the likes of Dr. Zubrin that perceives any to/from mission as a mere bus ride to another remote walk in the park. As for having to reside on Mars itself is apparently a no brainer for the likes of Dr. Zubrin, except perhaps for total lack of there being any local energy resource, damn little atmosphere and thereby even less possible O2 extraction, plus there's all those sub-frozen (dry-ice) to death aspects, and that of being easily pulverized to death without warning, and otherwise getting your DNA thoroughly TBI to death, plus the odds of becoming infected with some dormant but nasty microbe, that which all of the above hasn't manage to kill off, as otherwise there's no apparent fault with our spending those additional hundreds of billions if not trillions on sending those nice folks to Mars, and of Earth's environment having to expend the horrific sorts of masive energy requirements in order to make all of that happen, plus our suffering with another 100 tonnes of artificial CO2 as being generated per tonne of whatever is shipped off to Mars. Eventually (if anyone ever makes it back) defending ourselves from God knows whatever those surviving Mars microbes are going to do the rest of us should make life interesting.

    I believe so far that's about as realistically warm and fuzzy sort of mission outlook for our doing Mars, whereas overall the entire mission, of its ongoing support and aftermath should only cost us a few trillion bucks and euros, and perhaps subsequently warm mother Earth up another notch or two, as for what's another global warming degree ot two worth these days anyway?

    Now then, if it's so supposedly doable as to getting folks to/from Mars, and worth all of that trouble and extreme risk, then what about taking at most 10% of the Mars budget as for our just doing the same for Venus, or how about at most 1% of those trillions for establishing the initial phase of the LSE-CM/ISS infrastructure on our moon?

    At the very least the LSE-CM/ISS investment would provide invaluable Earth sciences, including absolutely terrific astronomy capabilities, and that of offering a darn good gateway for others going off to vist the wizard of Oz of whatever other planet. One other aspect of our doing the moon first, besides obtaining all sorts of new and improved energy for mother Earth, we'd certainly have created the necessary and ultimate safe-house for keeping all of those infected folks that somehow managed to return from Mars, and if need be accommodating such for the rest of their lives.

    At least for the notion of arriving upon Venus there's no shortage of easily available energy. The thick atmosphere is absolutely ideal for rigid-airship usage, as the notion of folks skydiving or gliding below them clouds would take forever getting through that soup, and it's actually not all that hot and nasty after midnight within their season of nighttime, whereas the atmosphere below them relatively cool nighttime coluds is relatively calm and crystal clear, there's certainly no corrosion going on, plus there's already numerous structures, a suspension bridge and even a large tarmac that's situated due North of at least one township that we can utilize, with several nearby reservoirs and a nifty canyon to boot.

    I'll bet we could trade cold bear and pizza for use of one of their rigid-airships, and if that dosen't turn the trick we could always trade off a few tonnes of pot, thus we don't have to R&D much of anything, although we may need to learn how to utilize photons for communications, as otherwise they're going realize exactly how dumb and dumber we really are, and/or how pathetically arrogant and dumbfounded our leaders have been all along.

    Regards, Brad Guth (BBCI h2g2 U206251) http://guthvenus.tripod.com/update-242.htm
     
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