Topic: This gives me visceral fear in my belly [picture]

Maybe this is what heaven looks like for technosalvationists.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

Thomas Jefferson

I see room for one last housing development, over in that stand of trees in the corner.

Hmmm. It's fairly obvious they don't get their oxygen from plants... So they probably get it from oxygen machines.

Then again this could be balanced out by the population lost as well.

I find it extremely difficult to understand how you come to this assumption. Plants are the most efficient method of "atmosphere scrubbing" known to man, and are very unlikely to be improved upon.

Coruscant was the capital of the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire, the New Republic, the Yuuzhan Vong Empire and the Galactic Alliance at various times. It is generally agreed that Coruscant is the most important world in the galaxy , evidenced by the fact that its hyperspace coordinates are (0,0,0). The galaxy's main trade routes—Rimma Trade Route, Perlemian Trade Route, Hydian Way, Corellian Run and Corellian Trade Spine—go through Coruscant, making it the richest and most influential world in the Star Wars galaxy.

Geologically, the planet comprises a molten core with rocky mantle and silicate rock crust.

Throughout the thousands of generations of galactic history, the entire surface of Coruscant has been covered over by sprawling skyscrapers and cities. The planet's oceans have all been drained and kept in vast underground caverns for future reuse. The only body of water visible is the Western Sea, a body of water left alone by the workers to be preserved for tourists and natives alike. The Western Sea has many artificially created islands floating on it, used by tourists on holidays. The only other piece of Coruscant's landmass that has been left untouched are the Manarai Mountains, twin peaks that stick up out of the ground near the famous Imperial Palace. Many floating restaurants revolve around the Mountains, giving patrons a unique view of the natural wonders.

Since there are no bodies of water available to feed and water its trillion inhabitants (despite the fact that it rains on Coruscant, as seen in Revenge of the Sith), Coruscant's architects along with many others from around the galaxy worked together to build a self-contained eco-system in the massive buildings set all over the planet. Engineers also developed a complex series of huge pipes through which polar ice is pumped through to the cities of Coruscant. Almost everything on the planet, from clothes to packaging and machinery is recyclable. Another problem for a world like Coruscant is the unimaginable amounts of carbon dioxide that its trillion being population generates each day, so atmospheric scrubbers were put into place in orbit to remove it. Galactic Standard Time was developed on Coruscant and revolves around the hours Coruscant has in a single day, which is 24 hours, with 368 local days a year. Coruscant produces 1 trillion tons of garbage every 30 seconds. When it is picked up it is brought to a vast factory-like place that launches the garbage into space.

I seriously doubt you can find it hard to believe that I would see this.

This space station photo, given the size of the city, implies agriculture. It implies TOTAL CONTROL of environment. This is actually a Takers wet dream.

It would be a shame if someone killed their "atmospheric scrubber" repair men.

no pity for the death star sub-contractors, eh?

no pity for the death star sub-contractors, eh?

"What is it?"
"It's a Death Star!"
"What does it do?"
"It does Death! It does Death, buddy!"

NASA Plans Lunar Outpost
Permanent Base at Moon's South Pole Envisioned by 2024

By Marc Kaufman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 5, 2006; A01



NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars. The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travelers headed onward, and would provide not only a haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel.

NASA officials declined to put a price tag on what will clearly be an extremely expensive venture. But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.

If the project goes ahead as planned, it would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.

NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said the agency met with hundreds of scientists, potential international partners and space businesses over the past year to discuss lunar options -- most pressingly, whether the plan should be based around a series of sorties to the moon or a permanent outpost and later settlement. The conclusion, she said, was that an outpost would be the best both for science and to prepare for exploration deeper into space.

Scott Horowitz, chief of lunar exploration, said: "The lunar base will be a central theme in our going forward plan for going back to the moon in preparation to go to Mars and beyond. It's a very, very big decision, and it's one of the few where I've seen the scientific community and the engineering community actually agree on anything."

Dale said that once the team endorsed the concept of an outpost, which would be about the size of the Mall, the next debate was over where to put it, with a focus on either of the moon's poles.

"Conditions at the south pole appear to be more moderate and safer," she said. The south pole is almost constantly bathed in light and would be an ideal place to set up solar-power collectors for an electrical system -- a precondition for achieving the kind of "living off the land" that NASA is aiming for.

Horowitz also said the polar sites are scientifically exciting because "we don't know as much about the lunar poles as we know about Mars." Officials said the area around the south pole has craters that probably hold volatile gases that could be collected for commercial purposes. Highest on the list of possible resources is helium-3, a form of the gas seldom found on Earth that could be well suited for nuclear power fuel.

The rockets and space capsules that will take astronauts back to the moon will be exclusively American, but Dale said the mission envisions and needs the cooperation of other nations. As part of the process, she said, NASA officials met with representatives from the European Space Agency and the national space agencies of Australia, Britain, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Russia, South Korea and Ukraine.

Dale said she will travel extensively next year to these nations and others to see how they might participate. One project she mentioned as attractive to NASA and possibly others is the deployment of an array of telescopes on the dark side of the moon to see far into the universe.

The NASA plan grew out of President Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, which was announced in 2004 and calls for sending astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars. Congress almost unanimously embraced the general plan last year in an authorization bill, but questions remain about its funding. NASA is counting on redirecting billions of dollars from the space shuttle and international space station programs to fund development of a new spaceship, but some critics have complained that the agency is already cutting back its science programs to pay for the moon-Mars project.

It seems appropriate that the space agency is aiming for the moon's south pole, because NASA Administrator Michael D. Griffin is fond of likening the lunar project to the exploration of Antarctica. Adventurers first reached Earth's South Pole in the early 20th century, but it wasn't until the 1950s that researchers returned and years later before they established permanent, year-round settlements.

NASA plans to send a robot lander to the moon in 2010 to look for good settlement sites. One of the top candidates now is near the Shackleton Crater (named, fittingly, for Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton), near the south pole, but NASA officials said their plans will evolve based on what they learn from rovers and satellites.

The new lunar plan harks back to NASA's Apollo era, when six missions landed on the moon between 1969 and 1972. But unlike Apollo's spacecraft, the new space transport being developed -- the Ares I rocket and Orion capsule -- will have a lander designed for reuse and to serve as a kind of "pickup truck," according to Horowitz. The plan also calls for the development of a pressurized rover that would allow astronauts to ride around the moon without wearing cumbersome spacesuits.

The first test flight of the Ares rocket is scheduled for 2009, and the first manned flight of the Orion is scheduled for 2014.

While NASA is counting on international support and funds to make the lunar settlement possible, the track record for international cooperation in space is mixed. The space station -- which was initially conceived and designed by the United States -- has taken far longer to assemble than planned, and at a far greater cost. Some of the 14 international partners have also chafed over American priorities for the station -- a situation that Dale said NASA hopes to avoid in the moon mission by bringing in partners very early in the planning process.

John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, commended NASA for undertaking a "bottom-up" assessment of the project. He said the program seems to have broad support in Congress, though it will probably get more scrutiny now with Democrats in charge.

"The basic assumption in Congress," Logsdon said, "is that this is the way to go."