
Bill introduced directing NASA to establish a moon base - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/04/bill-introduced-directing-nasa-to-establish-a-moon-base.ars
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melling
High-speed rail:

China: 5000 miles

US: 0 miles

There's only so much money. The US needs to build infrastructure, and other
things that will grow its economy.

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hugh3
Aw geez, not another high-speed-rail argument.

The US does not have, and will never have, an effective high-speed-rail
network. Nor does it really need one. You can already get from every city to
every other city in a slow convenient way (car) or a fast inconvenient way
(plane), and there's no real need for a third method intermediate in speed.
Have you ever been at a total loss to figure out how to get from one city to
another conveniently? I haven't.

The Chinese government can build high speed rail, cuz it doesn't mind ripping
up the houses of hundreds of thousands of people to build dead-straight rail
lines into the middle of cities. The US, at this stage, has far too much
investment in its cities to rip 'em up just so that I can get from San
Francisco to Los Angeles in four hours (instead of seven hours, or one hour).

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samfoo
Yes: Seattle/Portland/Vancouver BC via plane take only about 45 minutes of
actual flight time, but 2 hours or so of hassle going through airport nonsense
(more if you cross the border).

The drive is two hours, but a waste of gas and time if you're only going for a
weekend. Highspeed rail is the perfect intermediate and at a reasonable price
(read: $100 or so round trip) would be well more than enough reason to ditch
my car for basically all trips greater than 100 miles.

Just because there are some places in the USA where highspeed rail doesn't
make sense doesn't mean that argument extends to the whole country.

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hugh3
Actually you're right, there may well be parts of the US where high-speed rail
makes sense. On a project-by-project basis it's certainly an option worth
considering.

What I take issue with is the idea that because _other_ countries have it that
the US needs it too. That's a silly argument. Other countries have medieval
castles, ubiquitous bidets and abundant kangaroos, but the US doesn't need
those either.

(And in fact, only four countries in the world have a high-speed rail network
worth a damn -- that's France, Germany, Japan and China).

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samfoo
If I'm honest: I mostly want high speed rail because it's __badass __:-) I've
been on HSR in France, Japan and China and always feel like I'm in the future.

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sixtofour
"As its text notes, a return to the Moon has been a Congressional priority
several times before; that didn't stop Obama from dismissing it with "We've
been there.""

We've been to Oregon too, with Lewis and Clark. Fortunately, we went back.

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hugh3
Would we have been back to Oregon, though, if it turned out _not_ to be a lush
temperate land of conifer forests, rivers and flat arable soil, but a blazing
hot/freezing cold dangerously-irradiated vacuum composed of a mix of rocks and
much smaller rocks?

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Anon84
well... we did go back to New Mexico, Utah and the other desert states...

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starwed
I've actually seen arguments that we shouldn't really have settlements in
those areas -- more lush states aren't short of space, and it takes a large
amount of infrastructure to make it work.

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neworbit
You could say the same thing about Los Angeles (massive water requirements
over and above what native supply provides) but I don't see us abandoning that
particular location anytime soon either.

(Edit: clarified LA to Los Angeles)

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hugh3
I think this argument is silly in the context of the American southwest, but
may very well make a lot of sense for the goddamn moon.

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neworbit
Now I like the idea of a moon base and space research as much as the next
engineer (and we here at HN seem pretty friendly to it) but I have the general
impression that without commensurate investment, this is on par with saying
"NASA is directed to clone unicorns"

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hugh3
Pretty much, though not exactly.

NASA is, after all, made up of a vast number of people competing to get their
own favourite projects funded. If a directive comes down from on high that
NASA's primary goal is to build a moonbase then it means that projects
relevant to this goal start getting funded (and that projects irrelevant to
this goal get a hasty rewrite to make 'em sound like they're relevant to this
goal).

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civilian
We should be putting funding into a space elevator. Moving things into space
with rockets will be always be incredibly expensive and inefficient. If a
space elevator were built, moon (and mars) bases would easily be built, almost
as an afterthought. ("Oh yeah, I guess it is easy to do this now...")

Currently, all of our space vehicles are also built to withstand atmospheric
exit & entry. With a space elevator, we could afford to have elevator -> moon
or earth-elevator -> mars-moon/station transports that would be much easier to
build.

If there is any foolish government project I am willing to put my tax dollars
into, it's this.

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martin1b
Why again do we want to build a base on a big rock? And why do we fund NASA
for $20 billion/year? Especially in a struggling economy? Why doesn't some
other country step up to do this if it's so important? It seems the US spends
money on everybody except itself. Yet, we're the target for every criticism,
while others stand practically idle.

