NASA Presents Details of Plans for Moon Base

[edi]

NASA announced new details yesterday about its plans for a Moon base that included a pair of small, pressurized rovers with a range of nearly 600 miles.

The space agency plans to return astronauts to the Moon around 2020. Agency officials first described proposals last December for a polar lunar base powered by near constant sunlight on solar panels.

Earlier proposals to carry small habitation modules to the Moon in stages might be supplanted by a proposal that would heave a single large module to the Moon on an unmanned cargo ship, Doug Cooke, the NASA official leading the lunar study group, said.

The new rover would not be much larger than the buggies the Apollo astronauts drove, but would be pressurized so that astronauts could drive in shirt sleeves and be protected from radiation — probably by a layer of water in the rover’s body, said Geoff Yoder, an official working on the lunar plans. To explore on foot, astronauts would put on spacesuits and leave the vehicle, Mr. Yoder said. The cost? “More than a Ferrari,” he joked.

The scientists said they had also discussed nuclear energy as a power supply for the habitat, since that might be necessary for building a successful encampment on Mars. But, Mr. Cooke said, the initial power source for the lunar base “should be solar.” They have also discussed making the lunar lander and habitat mobile so that the base could be moved for exploration of other areas in what is being called “super sortie” mode, he said.

 

[Awesome]

Should put to rest to the claim that NASA encountered Aliens on the moon and they scared them away from returning.

Will it have military features? If so then I see a lot of nations having a problem with it. A missile launching platform on the moon would mean super strike capability on anyone.

 

[Contrarian]

All the space faring nations would put a claim on the moon if the US wanted to put a base there.
In this aspect im glad India is striving hard to send its astronauts to space, imagine if there were to be another nuclear apartheid. I mean that all the nations which had exploded the bomb before this date were given P-5 status and the rest were under them. The same should not happen again with India.

 

[edi]

china, E.U,Russia and japan had also anounced moon based space programs. But U.S have advantage on them. Imagine moon colonies of these countries on moon.Will they be peacefull there ?

 

[Always Neutral]

On a curious note will the Saudi's object ? I remember as a kid reading that when the first man landed on the moon there were protests in Saudi as the moon is a holy symbol.

 

[Contrarian]

LOL, do you think anyone actually gives a damn what the Saudis think?

 

[EagleEyes]

there were protests in Saudi as the moon is a holy symbol.

What the? More details please!!

 

[mustang]

Well all is good if NASA makes's a moon base by there are many rumours as to as NASA has not sent a man on the moon and it was all staged on a movie set in some secret US miltary base so as to get an edge over Russia in the Cold war because they were the first to send a satalite in to space and also the first human ....