Good day,

What to do, what do you want to do, what do you want me to do?

A Lunar Base, what do you see? What to do, what do you want to do?

If you could, would, should, go to the Moon, what would you want to do?

At 68 years young, I don't see me physically going to the Moon even if the powers to be make it so. I had thought though that it might be interesting if I could find some way to go there virtually on the web.

My thoughts tend to fade into dreamland and the wife is tired of hearing thoughts about same with no actual progress.

Don't know if you would want to go with me or not.

Jeroen Lapre' is still working on his short movie, Maelstrom II, based on the short story by Arthur C. Clarke that will take place on the Moon. Arthur C. Clarke isn't getting any younger either, so at least Jeroen is motivated to complete it soonest.
http://home.comcast.net/~jeroen-lapre/ArthurCClarke/MaelstromII/MaelstromII.html

It has been some time since I watched Space: 1999 on TV. Now I suppose you could watch chapters on your iPod should you want to travel to Moonbase Alpha, if only someone would think of making it so.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999

Paul Graham wrote "Hackers & Painters, and has a number of essays on the web. I read the book and have been reading his essays and these got me thinking about what it is that you folks might like to see in the way of going to space.

Paul is a Lisp programmer and the company "ViaWeb" he started got bought by Yahoo for making on-line stores. He used Lisp to help build his web application.
http://www.paulgraham.com/road.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/hackpaint.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/index.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/ind.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
Why Nerds are Unpopular

My train of thought often runs amuck and on strange tracks.

What I think might be the greatest idea, might give others a reason to throw tomatoes, so if you would like to throw a salad, feel free to throw those leaves wrapped around ideas that you might like to see implemented, discussed, explained, or just laid out on the table.
- LRK -

Have copied a few links about Lunar Base Proposals below just to show that folks have been thinking about it for awhile and that there are different ideas of how to go about getting us there and setting up a Lunar Base.

You probably have some ideas of what we should be doing if you had your say. It is ok, you can whisper it to me, I'll only tell the whole lunar-update list. :-)

Thanks for looking up with me.

Larry Kellogg

Web Site: http://lkellogg.vttoth.com/LarryRussellKellogg/
BlogSpot: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/
RSS link: http://kelloggserialreports.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Newsltr.: https://news.altair.com/mailman/listinfo/lunar-update
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http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/solarsystem/lunarbase_euro_020620.html

SPACE.com -- International Team Explores Lunar Base Proposals By Leonard David Senior Space Writer
posted: 07:00 am ET 20 June 2002

A first-of-its-kind workshop is underway in Europe to blueprint extraterrestrial bases for human settlement of the Moon. The international lunar base design study involves the talents of engineers, architects, industrial designers and specialists in medicine and psychology.

The multi-nation moon base conference is being held at the European Space Agency's (ESA) European Space Research Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, from June 10-21. Experts are hammering out concepts for bases to support a human return to the Moon.

A trio of Moon base scenarios is at the core of the 2002 Lunar Base Design Workshop. Each case study focuses on a 2020 timeframe to establish a small permanent habitat on the lunar surface.

Study teams are comprised of students with a bachelor's degree or higher, versed in a variety of disciplines.

Tin can design: out with the old

Driving the workshop is the need to show the European Space Agency (ESA) that the time for a Moon base project is now, said Paul van Susante, a civil engineer who is co-managing the study. He is also a research assistant at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.

"We're taking an interdisciplinary, reasonable, and systematic approach," van Susante told SPACE.com. "The lunar base designs of the past are pretty limitedand don't incorporate the specific conditions of living on the Moon for extended periods of time. The tin can design is outdated and not necessary anymore," he said.

Groups of lunar base designers are diving into case studies that involve a six-person outpost, situated near the Moon's South Pole. Some production capacity would be available to habitat dwellers in the year 2020. Lunar surface material, for instance, can be transformed into building materials and simple forms of solar cells. Use of remotely controlled robots is envisioned too.

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http://www.russianspaceweb.com/lunar_base.html

In the 1960s, the Moon Race between the United States and the Soviet Union made many scientists in both countries believe that human colonization of the Moon was at hand. Lunar bases became a frequent subject for the popular press and sci-fi novels; however, the space community also started looking at the problem seriously.

Advocates of lunar settlements believed that a permanent outpost on the Moon would allow extensive exploration of the Earth's natural satellite for future mining of its resources, for the use of its surface as a platform for astronomy research and as a "proving ground" for further planetary exploration.

Early proposals

In Russia, Konstantin Tsiolkovskiy, a visionary of space exploration, suggested use of the Moon as a source of raw materials for the human quest into space. (136)

Project Horizon

In June 1959, Wernher Von Braun and his group working at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., issued the first part of the study of a "Lunar Military Outpost" for the US Army, called Project Horizon. Saturn-I and Saturn-II rockets, whose development started about a year earlier, were to resupply the base. The study estimated that total 245 tons of construction materials, hardware and supplies had to be shipped to the lunar surface. (138)

Korolev studies

In the 1960s, Sergei Korolev, the father of the Soviet space program, was one of the first leaders in the country's space industry, to raise the possibility of building a long-term outpost on the surface of the Moon. In 1960, in the wake of the first Soviet successes in sending unmanned probes to the Moon, Korolev published an article in Pravda, the official publication of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the article, bylined "Professor K. Sergeev," Korolev outlined in general terms his plans for space exploration, including lunar expeditions: "The opportunity for direct exploration of the Moon causes a particular interest, first with the landing of automated scientific probes... and later by ways of sending researchers and constructing a habitable scientific station on the Moon." (137)

In 1962, Korolev further discussed the idea of the lunar base in the "Notes on Heavy Interplanetary Spacecraft and Heavy orbital Station," which were not been published until two decades later. In the "Notes" Korolev discussed developing infrastructure to support interplanetary travel, including a base to store consumables for interplanetary spacecraft.

The topic came up during a meeting of the Chief Designers Council, an informal governing body in the Soviet space industry, when it considered future tasks for the N1 moon rocket.

The consideration of a lunar base than reached the government level, which reacted with a decree on November 17, 1967, giving the green light to a "Galactika" (Galaxy) project. The plan assigned the industry to evaluate a broad range of issues associated with human exploration of the Moon, Venus and Mars.

KBOM studies

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http://www.google.com/jobs/lunar_job.html
Google Job Opportunities
Google Copernicus Center is hiring

Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.

The Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.) is a fully integrated research, development and technology facility at which Google will be conducting experiments in entropized information filtering, high-density high-delivery hosting (HiDeHiDeHo) and de-oxygenated cubicle dwelling. This center will provide a unique platform from which Google will leapfrog current terrestrial-based technologies and bring information access to new heights of utility.

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http://www.androidpubs.com/Chap07.htm
The first lunar base will most probably be entirely robotic. The reasons are very simple and practical. First, the costs of maintaining a robotic base will be much lower than the costs of a manned base. Second, due to the absense of humans, there will be no loss of life among the crew. Third, the initial tasks which need to be done at a lunar base can be easily carried out by robots. Fourth, far fewer and less complex facilities are necessary to sustain the robots than would be required to sustain humans.

In order to accomplish any task, only four things are necessary: resources, power, labor, and planning. Some people think that money is also necessary, but it is not. Money is only used to trade for one or more of the other four. On the moon, we will have free resources! That is, nobody will charge us for the materials we find there. This is in marked contrast to the earth, where you must pay someone for every resource you need except air or seawater (if you are near the ocean). The moon also has an abundance of free power - solar power. Again, nobody will charge us for using the solar power we find there. Our labor at the first lunar base will be androids. Since they must be operated from the earth they will not be free, but they will cost roughly the same as earth-bound workers. Most planning can be done here on earth and thus will not be too expensive. Indeed hundreds of companies around the world are already making lots of plans for space, the moon, lunar bases, trips to Mars and so on. Thus we will be able to reap the results of that planning at very low cost.

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http://www.astronautix.com/craft/chirbase.htm
Chinese Lunar Base
Class: Manned. Type: Lunar Base. Destination: Moon. Nation: China.

Beginning in 2000, Chinese scientists began discussing preliminary work on a Chinese manned lunar base. Although not funded, it remains a long-term objective of the Chinese space program in the second quarter for the second quarter of the 21st Century.

Beyond the initial Project 921 programmes for development of a manned earth orbit capability, Chinese scientists began talking during the course of 2000 of more ambitious plans for a lunar base. At Expo 2000 at Hannover the centre piece of the Chinese pavilion was a display of two Chinese astronauts planting the flag of the People s Republic on the lunar surface. On October 4, 2000 Associated Press reported that Zhuang Fenggan, vice chairman of the China Association of Sciences, declared that one day the Chinese would create a permanent lunar base with the intent of mining the lunar soil for Helium-3 (to fuel nuclear fusion plants on Earth). On October 13, 2000, Xinhua News Agency reported a more definite timetable. These seemed to be the dreams of academics rather than a definite funded programme, but at least indicated the expected course of development during the 21st ( Chinese ) Century:

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http://www.astronautix.com/index.html
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http://ads.harvard.edu/books/lbsa/
Lunar Bases
and Space Activities of the 21st Century

Papers from a NASA-sponsored, public symposium hosted by the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., Oct. 29-31, 1984

edited by W.W. Mendell

published by
The Lunar and Planetary Institute
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/
Houston

TL799.M6L83 1985 919.9'104 86-50
ISBN 0-942862-02-3

* Table of Contents
http://ads.harvard.edu/books/lbsa/toc.html
* Index
http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1985lbsa.conf..863.
* Associate Editors
http://ads.harvard.edu/books/lbsa/editors.html


Copyright © 1986 by the Lunar and Planetary Institute.
Made available electronically by the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

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http://www.spacedaily.com/spacenet/text/lunar-b.html
JAPAN SPACE NET

Talk About Lunar Base Getting Serious
Once simply the fodder for science-fiction stories, building a base on the moon is now being looked at in earnest by Japan.

Tokyo -- December 19,1996 -- Recently some 170 of the world's top space scientists, engineers and mission specialists attending the Second International Lunar Workshop in Kyoto, debating not only an extensive scientific re-exploration of the lunar landscape, but the setting up of a permanent manned presence within thirty years.

Speaker after speaker talked of the scientific and technical benefits to be accrued from exploring the moon. Some pointed to the huge tasks ahead developing critical technology needed even to get there again. But while the problem of raising finance was conveniently skipped during the five day confab, one topic dominated discussions; how to build a lunar base.

An interim declaration proposed by Chairperson Dr. Maria Perino, an engineer with Alevia Spazio, recognized that "The establishment of a permanently human-tended lunar base is the most crucial and decisive step toward human expansion into space." Assuming the capability to get there, itself a matter of intense debate, a 50 member sub-committee spent two days wrestling with some of the thornier issues. These included what the base should be made of, when it should be built and how it should be supplied. "Fifteen years ago a lunar base seemed very exotic...now there is a growing consensus on what a lunar base might be like," said Dr. Wendell Mendell, a planetary scientist from NASA. However, aside from the barest details, while some matters were agreed on by all, other points swirled around a mire of controversy.

Don't expect a city, and don't expect it soon

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http://members.aol.com/dsfportree/rtr.htm
Excerpts from Romance to Reality: moon & Mars plans Copyright 1996-2006 David S. F. Portree.

Author note: I launched the Romance to Reality website in August 1996. At its height, the site included more than 400 summaries of classic, seminal, and illustrative moon & Mars exploration planning documents spanning from 1950 to 2003. Romance to Reality led to my book Humans to Mars: 50 Years of Mission Planning, 1950-2000 (2001), several popular-audience magazine articles, invitations to speak at events across the U.S., information queries from students, filmmakers, journalists, authors, and NASA engineers, and, in 2003, an invitation to join the research faculty of the Mars Institute, which hosted the site during its final three years. I retired the site in July 2006 so that I could apply its contents to print publications. The 53 document summaries that follow (one for each year the website covered) form a fitting epitaph for Romance to Reality.

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[Note: Based on the above link, the links I have posted to David's work will now fail. Wish the best on his future projects. Hope to see David's work in print. - LRK -]
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http://news.altair.com/pipermail/lunar-update/2003-September.txt
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>From larry.kellogg at sbcglobal.net Mon Sep 1 16:52:39 2003
>From: larry.kellogg at sbcglobal.net (Larry Kellogg)
>Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2003 15:52:39 -0500
>Subject: [lunar-update] "Romance to Reality" Comes to the Mars
>Institute
>Message-ID:

Good Holiday here, but a Monday off anyway.

Well we have been looking for Aliens and visitors from outer space and we have thoughts about seeing if there is or ever has been life on Mars. (I could even think of looking in cold storage at our Moon's south pole. - LRK -)

What about the idea of just moving out and putting this life form on some other chunks of rock in Space. Sort of let the other life forms see us coming thing.

But you need a plan.

Plans we do. We write up plans and present them and then write some more.

You think not.

Take a look at all the plans David S. F. Portree has collected over the last
7 years.

Reading assignment.

Read the 300 plans and then see if you want to walk the talk. - LRK -

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http://www.marsinstitute.info/rd/faculty/dportree/rtr/
Romance to Reality: moon & Mars mission plans It is part of the nature of man to start with romance and build to a reality.
- Ray Bradbury

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WHAT THE MIND CAN CONCEIVE, AND BELIEVE, IT WILL ACHIEVE - LRK

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