:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 12.05.2006 ::
:: The Dark Side of the Moon ::
NASA to build permanent base on the moon
Daily Telegraph
NASA says it plans to build a permanently occupied base on the moon, most likely at the lunar south pole
The habitat will serve as a science outpost as well as a testbed for technologies needed for future travel to Mars, and construction will follow a series of flights to the moon scheduled to begin by 2020.
"We're going for a base on the moon," Scott "Doc" Horowitz, NASA's associate administrator for exploration, said from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston.
Plans for what the base will look like and what astronauts would do there have yet to be determined. Similarly, NASA has not projected a date when the base would go into operation.
The moon's polar sites are preferred to equatorial regions because of more moderate temperatures and longer periods of sunlight, which is critical for the solar-powered electrical systems NASA plans to develop. Eventually, nuclear power may be used to augment or replace the solar energy systems.
Scientists also suspect the poles have resources such as hydrogen, ice and other materials that could be used for life support.
"It's exciting," said NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale. "We don't know as much about the polar regions."
The US had already announced plans to develop new spacecraft to travel to the moon and land on its surface for the first time since the last Apollo flight there in 1972. It also plans to provide a communications system linking Earth and the moon.
But NASA doesn't plan to go to the moon alone. The United States will look for international and commercial partners to share the expense and possibly provide components such as extra power systems, living quarters and resources for surface travel on the moon.
NASA is not expecting a budget increase to pay for the program. Rather, it will use funds that will become available as the space shuttle fleet is phased out.
Read more here.
A L S O
America's Race to the Moon
California Literary Review
posted by me
:: 1:04:00 AM [+] ::
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