I never completely understood the need of launching massive ships from Earth whenever we want to leave it. Whenever we wanted to travel the seas, we did not build a massive caravel inland then painstakingly dragged it all the way to the coast. We reasoned it made more sense to build it in a dry dock, that way it only requires a tiny push to get it into the ocean.
Wouldn't anyone at NASA think that making a "Space Dock" made sense?. Make a bunch of tiny trips to lower earth orbit and build the ship there, so you can make a larger ships to travel further. Mass would not be such a big issue (granted, fuel would be), but at least the escape velocity problem would be non-existent.
Well, national space programs are not about exploring new frontiers. Military superiority and a corporate welfare program for defense contractors are about the only reasons that nation-states even pretend to have a "space program." NB: I'm not disagreeing with you -- if the US wanted a space program for exploration, that's what they should be doing, and as a tax-payer, I would be bitching loudly if they weren't. But exploration is not what the space program is for, so I don't bitch about it very much at
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/q-ZWo7VV2OY/story01.htm
Paige Butcher David Petraeus Petraeus Mia Love wall street journal us map Electoral Map
No comments:
Post a Comment