Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap Discussion

[Theory5]

Hey, I just read Moontanman's News Post about missions to Phobos. Destination Phobos: humanity's next giant leap

So NASA's reasoning is to go to Phobos instead of creating an outpost on the moon because larger rockets are required to get to the moon? To me this sounds like a bad Idea.

What if there are problems with the outpost? It will take longer to get back to earth, or it would take longer for earth to send help.

 

I say we create an outpost on the moon or a large spacestation in earth orbit that has the facilities to build spacecraft. This would save the trouble of having huge stage rockets taking off from earth and wasting all that energy to get out of the atmosphere.

Furthermore because of NASA's budget, this should be a joint effort, like the MIR was.

Anybody have any opposing idea's?

[36grit]

Looks to me like, most of the weight of mankinds rockets is the fuel. Most of the fuel is used to lift more fuel. Seems there'd be another way. Personally, I think we could use steam to blast a payload into space. We could probably use a catapult to blast off from the moon, but I don't know.

[belovelife]

well electromagnetic launch would be super efficien from the moon to and body in our solar system, so i agree a lunar outpost would be a good place to start, with an electromagnetic lunch we have more reliable transport in our solar system, for robotic and human ventures, plus the moon has water and oher materials that make it reasonabe to make an outpost, althought the time spent there would be difficult to time, muscle and bone loss and radiation and all, but i think these things can be overcome with science,

but with a united venture {america, china, russia, etc.} we should be able to do such a feat in resonable time considering the knowledge that we have accumulated in our years of space flight

[Moontanman]

Once you are halfway to the Moon you are halfway to most of the solar system in terms of energy expenditure. I think Ceres is a better idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Ceres

[Qfwfq]

Once you are halfway to the Moon you are halfway to most of the solar system in terms of energy expenditure.

If you don't care about time, that is. Reducing it requires more kinetic energy, which of course you don't recover any more than the gravity potential.