Quote:
Originally Posted by Daradon
The only thing that I wonder about is, why NASA hasn't returned in forever, and why, upon deciding they need a anniversary trips of sorts now, it's taking so long. Surely it should be easy with the 40 years of new technology we have. They had the equivelant computer power of 4 commodore 64's on the first lunar module or something like that. And rocketry and propulsion (not to mention ideas on space vehicles), while obviously not developing as madly as computers, has gone through significant advances too.
Certainly we can find some value in the moon, I can't imagine our closest celestial neighbour has no reason for us to go there for.
Not that I believe that we haven't been there. I always laugh at the flag question, it's so obvious at looking at it there is a cross bar on it. Similarly with the stars question. It's almost like asking why we don't see any stars during the daytime here. Heh. Too much light. Sure the light may be from other sources, even from the glow of the moon itself, but it's a pretty easily debunked question.
My biggest question is, if it was so easy (or at least possible) to get all these men and rovers there 35-40 years ago, how come we're having such troubles in space now and how come another moon landing is like a 10 year planning thing?
|
I'd say there are a lot of pretty simple reasons why it'll take another 10 years to go to the moon again, and my musings on them are below (note these are my own musings and my not be 100% accurate, but I'd be willing to bet they are close).
First up, building anything for the mission isn't as easy as just dusting off the old plans. For the rockets, they are such a huge undertaking, that just building the facilities to build them is a huge undertaking. Just building some new Saturn V's would be a big deal. Probalby just as big a deal as designing and building a new rocket from scratch. One that would likely be a lot more efficient.
Same goes for the different modules. We aren't going to go back with the same crappy computers the had on Apollo, and they were integrated parts of modules, and at the time the really hard parts to build. It's not just a matter of pulling the old computers out and reusing the design of the frames for the landers, command module etc. That'd be like trying to install a modern hard drive on your old comodore 64. It just wouldn't be compatible withouth a huge ammount of work. You might as well just start from scratch.
I do agree however that it should be a lot easier or us to build off of the experience that we have, than it was for the guys in the 60's who were doing raw research and development. However the biggest difference is the fact that right now getting to the moon is seen as a side project for the country. In the 1960's it was the end all be all goal of the US, and budget overruns be damned they were gonna get to the moon. That won't fly now, so they'll have to take their time and make sure that they do it on budget (or at least as close to budget as NASA has ever done anything).