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I'm all for going back to the moon, and this would be a project from Bush that I could support very readily...in fact, I might actually call the white house and voice my support for such a project...with one caveat: that we not abandon the International Space Station.
In order to effectively "test" Mars equipment and procedures we must have long duration microgravity space flight. Going to the moon does not do anything to help us deal with the real issues of long distance space travel...
I would think that we should be able to do this cheaper than we did with Apollo. For one, many of the procedures that were revolutionary just before Apollo started are now normal components of typical missions, notably docking and extravehicular activities. Also we wouldn't have to be using such limited resources. I've read, and AlphaSig OU can probably confirm, that the an entire mission to the moon using Apollo software could be run on a single computer you could buy off the store shelves today. Keep in mind that there were hundreds of computers in Launch control, and mission control during apollo. I might be underestimating and the actual figure may be that all the missions that landed on the moon (6 in all) could all be run simultaneously on one desktop computer. I think that might have come from Gene Kranz's autobiography.
On a side note, does Bush just have some sort of severe aversion to any sort of international cooperative? I mean there is no reason to abandon the ISS half built. And in the past he has backed out of any sort of plan that seems to be best pursued as a collective of nations.
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