Moon base

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amenhotepi

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Sometimes i wonder whether now that the ISS is up and running, the americans will be reckoning on a Moon base, to follow.<br /><br />If i have spoken too soon and they already have the 4x4 on the Moon SERVICED and astronauts living in that, it is only utterances
 
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amenhotepi

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i wonder what " collective Research " would be keyholed-for there on Lunar surface
 
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nexium

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I live in Florida, USA. I don't think we have a moon base and don't expect one before 2020. We did a lot of good science on the Moon 30 years ago so there is little urgency to do more moon science. I would like to see us with a bare bones asteroid habitat, but that lacks the glamor of going to Mars. Neil
 
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radarredux

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> <i><font color="yellow">We did a lot of good science on the Moon 30 years ago so there is little urgency to do more moon science.</font>/i><br /><br />I think the amount of science was very limited -- not a lot of time spent on site, not a lot of sample points, not a lot of material brought back for testing. There is still a lot more that can be done.<br /><br /><br /> /> <i><font color="yellow">I would like to see us with a bare bones asteroid habitat</font>/i><br /><br />Griffin mentioned similar activities in the Planetary Society report about a year ago (see discussion on Near Earth Objects (NEOs)). I think one concept of operations is not to "land" on an asteroid but to match the orbit of a NEO with a CEV + Habitat spacecraft (for long-term missions), and then send small robotic probes all over the asteroid. By having astronauts "on site", they could interactively control the robots, bring samples into the CEV+Hab, and quickly adjust the mission as discoveries are made "on site".<br /><br />Such a spacecraft could consist of a core CEV (e.g., capsule), a Bigelow habitat module, a propulsion unit, and special docking facility/module for robotic probes and sample return while "on site". The habitat would also include a basic workbench so engineers could modify the probes "on site" to adjust to mission needs.<br /><br />The habitat, propulsion unit, docking facility, and fuel could probably be launched on a single 125 MT HLV that griffin wants. Once everything checks out, the crew would fly up in the CEV for rendezvous and departure.</i></i>
 
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