The US President announced on Wednesday (20:30 Israel time) the development of a new spacecraft that will transport American astronauts to a base on the moon by the end of 2015 and eventually reach Mars and beyond
See also commentary at the end
Update 14/1/2004 time 21:00
The US president announced on Wednesday (20:30 Israel time) the development of a new spacecraft that will transport American astronauts to a base on the moon by the end of 2015 and eventually also reach Mars and beyond.
Bush will withdraw the US from the International Space Station and retire the International Space Station around 2010.
"We will return to the moon by 2020, where a permanent base will be established for a human landing on Mars and beyond." This is the news that US President George Bush brought with him last night (Wednesday), when he announced a new space program.
Ahead of the dramatic speech of the US President, George Bush, the White House released information about the space program he had announced. From the plan it appears that Bush intends to initiate the production of new space shuttles. These shuttles, which will be produced by 2015, are to be used by the American space agency NASA in an ambitious journey to the moon, by 2020.
This is not a simple landing on the moon, as the Americans did for the first time in 1969. According to Bush's ambitious plan, which is published against the background of an election year, the Americans will establish a permanent base on the moon. The base will eventually serve as a springboard to Mars.
"It is time for America to take the next step. I am announcing today the new program for space exploration," Bush said. "We will start it quickly and use the existing teams."
As mentioned, in the program Bush also said that the Americans will withdraw from their participation in the International Space Station by 2010, after they fulfill their obligations to the Russians. They will also stop using the outdated space shuttle fleet by the same year. One of them - Columbia, crashed as I recall in February 2003 due to a malfunction and inside it was Col. Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut.
"A new space vehicle will be opened that will be able to transport the people to other worlds. It will be the first space vehicle of its kind since Apollo," said Bush, adding that now, 25 years after the last space vehicle was built, the time has come to take the step.
In his speech, Bush explained the new space doctrine according to which the base on the moon will be used as a connecting station on the journey to Mars. Even before the human journey to Mars, additional unmanned research vehicles will be sent to Mars by 2008. Mars is not the only stop on Bush's planned journey. The Americans, according to the plans, will begin to explore more extensive and distant regions of the solar system. "Man is making his way into the cosmos," Bush said.
"An extensive presence on the moon will allow astronauts to develop new technologies and harness the rich resources on it for the purpose of exploring even more challenging environments," read the White House announcement, which this time did not deal with changes in Iraq or the situation in the Middle East.
Technologically, the American idea is clear: since the gravity on the moon is about one-sixth that on Earth, any launch from a launch base placed on it will be cheaper.
"The president's vision reaffirms our commitment to human space exploration," the statement added. "He gives NASA a new focus and clear goals." Indeed, the White House understands that the American space agency needs such a focus. After the Columbia ferry disaster, many American voices were raised who doubted the agency's ability to recover from such a disaster.
The White House also stated that the price tag of the new program will be "possible", and "will allow NASA to meet the highest safety standard". The increase in NASA's budget will stand for the next five years at a price set by the modest White House - one billion dollars. Another source of funding would be an 11 billion dollar cut from other NASA programs.
"We choose to explore space because it improves the quality of our lives and encourages the national spirit. Let's continue the journey", Bush concluded his speech.
Preliminary information 14/1/2004
US President George Bush unveiled a new plan that would include the establishment of a permanent base on the moon and a manned flight to Mars. He is supposed to give NASA 800 million dollars to start the program and an additional billion dollars for its budget (which is about 15 billion) every year for the next five years.
However, critics say that the operation will cost much more and America cannot afford such an ambitious idea. They also charge that Bush is proposing this in order to win back the voters' votes in the elections that will be held near the end of the year.
New horizons
The president's announcement was intended to reinforce the US space program, which has known many setbacks, the most serious of which is the Columbia disaster.
The new focus will be on manned flights, first to the moon and then to Mars. For the first time in a decade, the astronauts will fly somewhere.
The spirit is going to be one of continuous discovery, seeking new horizons and investing in a program that will help reach those goals: Bush told reporters in Mexico on Tuesday.
During his visit today to NASA headquarters in Washington, Bush details the plan:
The plan will call for retiring the space shuttles by 2010; to build a cheaper and more reliable vehicle than the shuttle to fly people; The International Space Station program will be cut after the next phase of its construction; After 2016, NASA will leave the station to its partners - the European Space Agency, Russia, Canada and Japan;
Return to the moon within 9-12 years, with a manned base and immediately after that send humans to Mars.
Although the president has already allocated 800 million dollars to start the process and a five percent addition to NASA's annual budget will be required.
However, critics, including among conservatives, the idea is irresponsible at a time when the deficit in the federal budget is rising. "It is a fiscal absurdity. Bush is wasting money as if we have money to burn to our heart's content, but we don't," says Stephen Moore, president of the Growth Club, a conservative group that supports Bush. President Bush Sr. proposed sending a man to Mars when he was at Tefid in 1989, but he did not mention a base on the moon. The project did not move forward after its cost was estimated at 500 million dollars.
However, the current president's announcement comes as the space program celebrates the successful landing of the Spirit robot on Mars. While the president is at NASA headquarters, his deputy, Dick Cheney, will visit the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California to talk about the new direction there.
Walla News adds:
The space program of the US President, George Bush, did not sweep the American public with enthusiasm - according to a survey conducted by the AP agency. More than half of the participants thought that instead of a permanent base on the moon, it would be better to invest the funds in internal affairs.
48% of respondents expressed support for expanding the US space program, while a similar number opposed it. Most of the participants in the survey expressed general support for the continuation of manned missions to space. When the respondents were presented with a choice between investing the money in space or in education and health, 55% preferred the option closer to them and to the ground.
Advertisement Dallas Hodgkins, a researcher from the University of Michigan, explained to the "Washington Post" that "you can't go to war, cut taxes, the economy is garbage and you invest billions in space flights. How will we pay for it? It doesn't seem morally right to me." Paula Steiner, a resident of Jacksonville, actually supports the Bush plan. "It seems to me a great idea. It is human nature to investigate what is happening in other places."
President Bush is expected to tell tomorrow about his pretentious space exploration program, as an initiative to promote his position in the upcoming elections. The latest survey data should make him reconsider the idea. The participants in the survey increased their opposition, when they were told that the Bush administration was initiating the plan, in relation to the position they demonstrated when they were told that "the US is planning...".
A museum of the history of the solar system and a jumper to Mars or
Why should you establish a permanent base on the moon?
By Kenneth Chang
Rather than the distant Mars, the moon is, in the eyes of some researchers, a tempting destination for manned space travel. This journey is at the center of the proposal made by the President of the United States, George Bush, at the beginning of the week. According to the proposal, by 2015 the manned flights to the moon will be renewed with the aim of establishing a permanent base on it, and within 20 years a man will be launched to Mars.
Geologists who support putting astronauts on the moon believe that lunar rocks may yield a lot of information about the first billion years of Earth. In the eyes of astronomers, the moon is an ideal site for placing a telescope that will look deep into the universe.
"We can get a lot out of the moon," said Dr. Alan Treiman, a scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Research Institute in Houston, "but it's not research that particularly fascinates the public."
After the dizzying success of the "Apollo" mission, the public lost interest in further manned flights to the moon. The Nixon administration made deep cuts to NASA's budget and in the three decades since then, the agency has sent unmanned spacecraft to more distant and mysterious worlds, such as Mars and Jupiter.
In this period of time, only two small research spacecraft were sent into a peripheral orbit around the moon. "Clementine", launched in cooperation with the US Department of Defense, found signs of frozen water at the south pole of the Moon in 1994. In 1998 and in Lunar Prospector "1999" she provided further and convincing evidence for the existence of ice on the surface of the moon and mapped its gravitational field and magnetic field.
If a permanent base is established on the moon, it will be possible to use it in the journey to Mars. Since the moon's gravity is equal to one-sixth of the Earth's gravity, collecting raw materials on the moon - from metals to build the shuttle to water to satisfy the needs of the astronauts - will be much cheaper than flying these materials from Earth. This way it will be possible to reduce the cost of the journey to Mars and reduce the difficulties involved.
A base on the moon will also be used to test new technologies, which will be developed for the flight to Mars. But the moon also offers its own temptations. About 4.5 billion years ago, a planetary body the size of Mars collided with the young Earth. Following the collision, a block of rock was thrown into space, which became the moon. The mass of the moon is equal to one-eightieth of the mass of the earth; Therefore, the moon cooled to its core a long time ago, and remained geologically dead. The moon is also too small to have an atmosphere around it.
It is precisely this geological death that excites researchers. Geologists see the moon as a sort of museum of the history of the solar system. "Exploring the Moon can tell us how the Earth was formed," Treiman said.
The movement of the tectonic plates on Earth destroyed almost all the rocks that formed on the surface in the first billion years of the planet's existence. On the moon, these rocks are still found on the surface. The youngest rocks on the Moon are as old as some of the oldest rocks on Earth: 3.2 billion years.
The 382 kilograms of rocks that the astronauts brought to Earth revolutionized the scientific understanding of the Moon. The similarity between the mixture of oxygen atoms in the rocks of the moon and the mixture in the rocks of the earth proved that they both have a common origin. This finding contradicted the hypothesis that the moon was formed elsewhere in space and at some point was "captured" by the earth's gravitational force.
But the rocks were taken from the six sites where the Apollo missions landed. The rest of the surface of the moon - which is the size of the continent of Africa - has not been explored. Dr. David McKay, a scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center, wants the agency to send missions to other sites on the moon, to dig trenches up to 100 meters deep. These trenches will make it possible to study in detail the upper layer of the soil, which is made of dust and crumbled rocks. "I think there is a lot of information hidden on the moon that has yet to be deciphered," McKay said. "The upper soil layer of the moon is like a huge recording device, which works for billions of years."
While geologists search the moon for evidence of Earth's history, astronomers seeking to look further into the universe are interested in it as a site to place a large telescope, which can focus on one area of the sky for weeks or months. Temperatures close to absolute zero and an airless environment are essential for obtaining a sharp image. Placing the telescope on the moon will make repairs and upgrades easier.
"Many believe that the moon offers the conditions we want," said Dr. Roger Angel, an astronomer from the University of Arizona. Angel proposed placing a large infrared telescope inside a deep crater at the south pole of the moon.
A telescope placed on the moon will be more sensitive than the Hubble Space Telescope. Moreover, it will be able to detect galaxies and stars much fainter than those that will be picked up by Hubble's planned successor. It may even be able to pick up the light emitted from the first stars formed in the universe, half a billion years after the Big Bang. "It's something that could be done very well from the moon," Angel said.
For news at the BBC
The knowledge of man and space
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~736720106~~~8&SiteName=hayadan
