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Worldwide Focus On Going To The Moon
MojoT writes "There's an interesting piece over at Space.com regarding the current renewed interest in returning to the Moon. Quoting: 'Earth's scuffed up and trampled Moon is once again targeted for high- tech visitors. Robotic spacecraft from several nations, as well as NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense, will be first to chalk up lunar return mileage.'"
why spend more on the moon? put more funding into asteriod detection so we can save our asses! :-)
Go Illini!!!
Which raises an interesting question.. when will countries start claiming territory on the moon?
Ban the burial of *any* holy people on the moon. I don't want to risk another future "holy land" fight up there.
Even say a nutball who claims to be Jesus II. If he dies up there, send his fricken ashes back to Earth.
Table-ized A.I.
NASA claims to have learned from its mistakes in the 1998 Mars failures, but if we start talking about sending people far away (like the moon), we'd better make sure things are really fixed.
No quick bailout from the moon like they have on the ISS in case something goes wrong.
The United States and Russia spent trillions in a senseless Cold War that resulted in nothing but a few broken nations (Afghanistan, Cambodia, Vietnam) and alot of hydrogen bombs laying around being poorly guarded.
Actually, it was only because of the cold war that we went to the moon in the first place.
For that matter, many of the rocket scientists who worked for the US and USSR were previously employed for the Nazis, developing weapons such as the V-2.
Item: India can (has) put a tonne into geosynchronous orbit or 3 tonnes into LEO for $12M, about the same cost (according to this article) as getting one DoD microsatellite to the moon as a hitchhiker.
Item: A shuttle launch costs about $300M, representing 29 tonnes to LEO for roughly $11M/t
Conclusion: India can loft cargo for roughly 1/3 the price of the Shuttle.
Item: An unmanned return Moon mission (also ex the article) costs about $600M.
Conclusion: Estimating roughly half of this cost to be launch, if India did the launches, the missions would cost $400 apiece.
Item: The cost of putting up a space elevator has been set at $10G; a space elevator would drop launch costs (measured against the Shuttle) about a hundredfold (ie, to roughly $100k/t).
Conclusion: This would, in theory, involve a single Shuttle launch, making the $200M saving realised by having India loft it probably not worthwhile against the added complexity of a segmented load and the added flexibility of a Shuttle.
Conclusion: If instead of America doing 18 return Moon missions for $10G (or 25 missions if India lofted them), they were to put up a space elevator for $10G, they would achieve payback before the 40th mission. This is on return automated Moon missions alone. DoD could probably then toss cans at the moon for under $5M apiece.
Speculation: The additional space infrastructure which an elevator implies would probably hasten payback. The availablility of cheap ($100/kg, compare that with the price of, say, caviar - vs $10,000/kg now) steadily deliverable supplies would even further reduce the cost of manned missions. Payback from other items like solar power satellites (to say nothing of the reduction in pollution etc) would probably make an elevator worthwhile anyway.
Summary: leave the moon alone for a decade. Put up an elevator instead. Then you can have all the moon you want for a fraction of the price.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
While I'm all for anything that gets the human race back in space, the Moon shouldn't be our first destination. It's gotta be Mars.
The Moon is a harsh environment (some would say mistress), and colonies there will likely never be able to support themselves with native resources alone. Surface temps on the Moon are scorching, water is nearly impossible to find (despite the optimistic tone of the article), there's no atmosphere to speak of, there's a lack of important metals, and the nights are two weeks long. Lunar industry and colonists will probably always need help from Earth just to stay alive.
But not Mars. Mars has water, soil, sunlight, 25 hour days, and summer daytime temps that reach almost 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And did I mention the sunsets?
Our frenzy for space exploration, and our willingness to fund it, seems to come and go in waves. What happens when the current wave passes? Do we want a stranded lunar outpost which will rely on Earth for most of its supplies, or do we want a Martian community which can largely sustain itself when we start pinching pennies again? It's the difference between colonizing Virginia or Antarctica. We really ought to make our money count.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Why start with distant Mars, to re-learn the ropes?
The Moon and Mars are two vastly different environments, and the skills of colonizing these environments probably won't have much overlap.
Our goals on both will be very different. Going to the Moon won't teach us how build greenhouses from Martian elements, for instance, because natural light greenhouses aren't a part of Moon colonization. Looking for water ice hidden in deep crater shadows is a skill we'll try to perfect on the Moon, but on Mars we'll be drilling to find water. We'll learn different things from each environment, and we'll need different skills for each environment, so I think the argument that we should explore the Moon first so we'll be ready for Mars is based on a false premise. You could just as well say the reverse.
But don't get me wrong! There are lots of good reasons to colonize the Moon, too, including using it as a base for astronomy, or even better, for lunar solar power which can be beamed back to Earth via microwave.
If I thought we could do both simultaneously, I'd be for it. But my hunch, based on history, is that the winner takes all. And I don't think lunar exploration is politically financially sustainable. Since a Martian colony could reasonably be expected to support themselves, while a lunar colony can't, I've gotta support putting our energies into Mars first.
If anything, I think the argument works in reverse: if we have a sustained colony on Mars, we're going to be constantly being brought back into thinking about space and its possibilities, but if we have a lunar colony that goes bust, we'll be much more likely to ignore those possibilities, the same way we have been for the past 30-odd years.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
that until there are exploitable economic resources, and permanent residents there, it's not an issue. When people try to economically exploit the moon, it will become an issue then and will be settled by normal political means (ie international treaties, popular movements, shady underhanded deals, wars...).
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The difference in this case is that Antarctica is close enough for us to send help if a disaster strikes and to set up regular supply lines...
This mentality is exactly why Mars ought to be colonized first. We can't count on having the political or economic will to support regular supply lines indefinitely. The political and economic climates on Earth change rapidly. What happens when the political winds have shifted, and the Moon isn't pulling its economic weight? We cut back. Maybe, like the Russians did with Mir, we end up abandoning our investments altogether, after we've damaged them through lack of continuous maintenance.
Colonizing Mars brings with it a different mindset and different possibilities. It brings with it the mindset of self-reliance instead of trade reliance, for example. And it brings with it the possibility that even when we fail to maintain our political will, Martian colonization can survive and even grow with minimal intervention from us for long periods of time.
We had the chance to colonize the Moon once before, and we blew it. We couldn't maintain the momentum. Let's not allow ourselves to make the same mistakes again.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.