This is a simple question to answer, and there is much more depth in this answer than because it’s there. Biology is the most important factor if you understand anything about Mammals. As the Human species fills is planet the free space that people mentally posses shrinks almost every second as another human is born. And this arising problem has nothing to do with Claustrophobia. As mammals become more enclosed, germs and viruses grow in there abundancy, and mammals brain sociology is framed with the desire to explore and conquer new territories so mammals have the feeling of freedom. If this freedom is denied the brain develops the mental status of Rabies, the viral aspect aspect comes with the abundance of life and it’s aftermath death and decay creates the germs. The mental aspect may be best viewed via the daily news of terrorism. The germ aspect was exposed to humanity in Europe some 500 to 800 years ago with the Black Death.

The biological aspect has been some what rendered harmless by the simple solution of cleanlyness. The mental aspect has not really been explored from the angle that I am referring to it as, and may never if the American attitude pervales over the world. This minor flaw with the American persona is I’m perfect, and if I’m accused of a wrong it is Someone elses or something elses fault, This causes Americans to look at anyone or anything but themselves. To solve this problem that is genetically engrained into all mammals, and humans are intelligent destructive mammals, it may take more than a few years to solve if it can be solved. A natural genetic solution may take millions of years.

The easiest and fastest solution I see is to find new space for the Human Mammal to explore and conquer. This solution was expressed best by a popular TV programs opening words, Space our Final Frontier, the show was called Star Trek and it does not directly tell us how to get there but indirectly inspires many to desire to aim for this target in the future. I was inspired in exploring Space when then President JFK set NASA’s destiny for the moon. And strangely this May 25th date is also my birthday. The other odd factor is my brother is working for Lockheed Martian as an Electrical Engineer for the cration of the Ares Command Module.

In the spring of 1986 after watching the January 26th launch of Space shuttle Challenger end after 73 seconds of flight, I wanted to find a better, easier and safer way to venture into space. I spent the mext 3 months searching the Denver Metro Community Collage library for better ways, this library is the backup to the Library of Congress in Washington DC. My solution was what I labeled as Elrvator to the Stars. I mailed in my article to OMNI magazine, two weeks later I received my May issue of OMNI magazine, to my surprise the front page article was on the same subject and the same title as my submitted article. I at first felt honored, but looking into the fact the story was similar to my submition. I learned that this idea was first created by Arthur C Clarke back in 1947. That May I then decided to use the knowledge I had gained researching the Space Elevator idea on writing a paper on how to reach the stars. I submitted my paper to Omni magazine and that was the last I saw of it, no further news or even a rejection slip from Omni, so all I know is it is floating in space as a bunch of atoms.

Like the current path NASA is taking, directed by President Bush’s directional outline in 2004, my 1986 paper was very similar in structure. I went back to Rockets that never had a major problem in the Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo programs. I used Saturn like rockets to do what NASA mostly did with the Space Shuttle building the ISS. After a two decades of learning how to live in Space, in the 21st Century would spawn a Moon Base. After another 20 years of colinizing the Moon we would aim for Mars. As we colonized Mars, our next ventures would be to start mining the Asteroids and the Asteroid Belt for minerals to build further endeavors in our Solar System. As the 22nd Century begins the inhabitants of third rock from the Sun will have populated the Sol Solar system, humanity is now ready ti venture into Galactic Space with it’s primative ION powered Space Ships. We may not at that time have knowledge of how to Warp Space for Warp drive engines but we may have progressed our velocity measurements from Mach factors into Percentage of the speed of light.

The next factor past biology is the money factor, as the 21st century begins the nations of the world is having major problems with it’s financing systems, and many if not most may say “Space is a dream, first we need to afford housing and pay for medical bills. From my view this whole problem was caused by the same people that we are placing in power to solve what they have created. In my eyes our financial mess began as the Berlin Wall fell and Russia imploded. The implosion of the USSR was created by the infection of crime coming from Mafia type rulers, and by Political leaders that desired and took commanding control of how individual people lived. And all for the purpose of ingratiating themselves with the power that those they control no longer holds.

The United States not wishing the Mafia and Crime to control Russia gave financial aid to the former Communist Nation. What America did not know was that Crime was almost engrained into the Governing people of Russia. These problems of Russia did not have any major effect on the world as it collapsed and the reason why the implosion of the USSR mostly only hurt Russia, most of the rest of the countries around the world followed the United States of America.

The fanatical system the United States having such power was the key factor that President Reagan and the Star Wars Defense System was the major straw that broke the Russian Camels back. But in our glee of becoming the worlds last remaining Super Power no one ever noticed slower acting plan that Communist Russia started as the first war in human history ended in a stalemate. Kruchef’s 50 year plan of Social cival dependancy wasa not as fast as Reagan’s Star Wars Defencive System in destroying the opposition’s world power in almost a third of time in lenght. If humanity is to survive we need to recover the free maerketing system, this free marketing system was the main key factor in the failer of the Communist system. If we fail to reinstate the free market system in time we will never have the power of any person conquering space. The socialist self centeredness of the control by one will

mute the power of the indivigual to evolve into a higher form of life. In summary if you desire the extiction of humanity, all you have to do is let Socialism win, thus first destroy the free marketing system, that let America defeat Communist Russia with out really firing a single shot. After that America with it’s powers of freedom bless upon it by GOD. If America dies then the world becomes a puppet to it’s political puppet masters. Then as America ends all of Earth becomes hell and humanity will not be far behind in it’s death.

An issue that keeps coming up in some of the discussions I’ve been involved in is that NASA labors under the assumption that everyone will “get it” if we just explain it better. Instead, we should be doing what one person called “market research” to figure out how to make what we do relevant to the American people.

Personally I consider Shackleton’s trip to Antarctica to be a useless ego trip. Yes there has been some government funded science down there, but so far no one has tried to make anything in Antarctica pay for itself. If it can’t then it will never see more than its usual cadre of 4000 some odd scientists. Its resources will never be exploited, no one will live there. It will remain sterile. Is that what we want space to be like?

“It’s a *feeling* we are talking about ” Feelings don’t pay bills, justify long term budgets, or turn a profit. Maybe in Hollywood they do, but only in a limited unsustainable sense.

Agree with others that the narrarator helps a great deal with the pitch. When Wayne did it at Von Braun Symposium, it went over very well. I understand some of the comments on a technical audience, but different things connect with different people. Even technical people can enjoy the pitch (I can vouch that many in the audience were impressed with Wayne talking it), it just may not sway them from a data standpoint, but hey, maybe that is the point. No one would ever have invested in Columbus if Return on Investment was the decision maker, but I think in retrospect it was a pretty good investment for Spain. It seems when you mention Columbus, the potato is a unique thing, but maybe if you added interesting content or additional facts. Of course there is always the unfortunate part which is that they “plundered” the natives (probably a lesson there as well). So again, good job. I am pleased you keep plugging at new ideas.

A good pitch that nicely covers the exploration rationale for lunar return.

However, two key aspects of lunar return are not covered: habitation of another world and lunar resources to create new spaceflight capability.

We go to the Moon not just to explore, but to learn the skills needed to survive and work productively there. These skills will be needed for all future exploration missions — to Mars, to the asteroids, and even to more exotic places. Closing the life support loop, people and machines working together, safe habitation and efficient operational procedures are all needed and living on the Moon will teach us these skills and allow us to develop those technologies.

On resources, production of lunar oxygen and hydrogen will allow us to build our first refueling station off planet. We simply must learn how to use the resources of space to explore space. If we don’t, we will always be mass, power and capability limited to very small, short, and insufficient exploratory missions. Lunar resources were originally a critical aspect of the Vision and one NASA has largely dropped the ball on it. Note well: we don’t know how to do this. We must at least learn if it’s possible or not.

Please check out the presentations on this very topic on my web site here:

http://www.spudislunarresources.com/Papers.htm

In particular, I call your attention to the last post there, the presentation I made last July at the NASA Lunar Science Conference at Ames:

http://www.spudislunarresource.....y_2008.pdf

Good job! If you don’t mind, I’ll add your page here to my links page at SLR.

When the ‘Vision’ was established, its purpose was clearly stated to be to move into space, to the moon, and eventually to Mars, to stay; to make these a part of the sphere of operations of the human world – for purposes of civilization (the species will not survive if we do not develop this capability) and for economic competitiveness (this includes educating our youth and establishing active commerce – and by the way if moon rocks and native materials are not worth bringing back, then the commercial reason is probably something different – perhaps tourism and colonization).

What does it take to design the capability reflected in Clarke’s and Kubrick’s 2001 A Space Odyssey – and which pieces of the puzzle are we missing that we need to develop to get us to that level of civilization ?

Apollo on steroids is not going to get us there. That is analagous to using a Lockheed Vega capability for air transportation and commerce. The Vega was a great vehicle, used by handful of explorers, but it took the Ford Tri-Motor, the Boeing 247, and then the Douglas DC-3 before air transport was commercially viable. That kind of a commitment takes a national effort. NASA keeps trying to do the job itself – but events over the last few years and months have shown that the commercial world will do the job of commerce and the expansion of civilization’s interests far more efficiently. NACA helped to design the Vega and its influence carried over to the later airliners, but industry defined what they need and got the capital to support its development.

The lesson should have been learned over the last fifty years that we are not going to the moon for the sake of science – science is one of those things that some people will do and we will likely learn some interesting things – but its not the purpose and really should not be NASA’s focus. Most scientists doing science are in academia, industry, and the national labs.

In order to establish space as a part of the human world, yes it will take some exploration – but that’s just a step on the way. Unfortunately, its not exploration if you keep going back to the same place in the same manner – whether thats the moon or a specific place on the moon. The design of new technology can be looked upon as a kind of exploration. Constellation uses the same technology we have today, but in a slightly different form. Why reinvent the wheel ? Once the technology is developed, its not exploration anymore. Lunar ‘exploration’ on the five missions that followed Apollo 11, and the repetitiveness of Shuttle and Space Station orbits should be good lessons to heed.

We developed the capabilities of Apollo, and Saturn, and Shuttle and ISS at great national cost – and Atlas and Delta – too. Use the technology effectively as a steppingstone to developing new capabilities that move beyond our present capabilities. Constellation is not effectively doing either.

Unfortunately the use of Shackleton and polar exploration as an example that NASA is emulating is a poor one. A hundred years later, the arctic really is not visited that much by people, particularly not for economic purposes, and not much civilization is in place there. Why bother ? Its expensive and it really does not provide much for civilization.

This presentation misses the point of the Vision, just as the Constellation Program has missed the point. Technology, economic competitiveness, and expanding the sphere of the human world is what its about. Exploration is a step in the process. Science is a great byproduct. Neither is the reason for going there.

Unfortunately this presentation’s missing the point of the reasons for the program really is very telling and very much reflects the failure of the NASA mindset. And if the NASA management and organization does not know why they are doing it, how can they hope to convince anyone else ?

Oh, and Keith is correct (in my view); just seeing the powerpoint leaves much to be desired in the absence of the comments of the presenter.

And I find that I just can’t get enough of Shackleton.