Speculations on a Moon Colony

Buggernut writes "As reported by the BBC, humans could be living on the Moon within 20 years, according to a leading lunar scientist."

Comments

Deja vu

[Spudley]

Fourty years ago, when the Americans were graring up for their first moon missions, the 'pundits' made exactly the same predictions.

Today it's the Chinese, but it all seems very similar.

Sure we've got better technology now, but will that really make the difference? Lunar colonisation will only happen when there's political will to see it happen, and frankly, I can't see the conditions being right for that for some time.

"What makes your rockets go up?"

[dpbsmith]

The article just says it's technologically feasible. How boring.

In the movie The Right Stuff, and, IIRC in the book,a congressman says to an astronaut "What makes your rockets go up?" The astronaut starts to saying something about reaction masses and exhaust velocity, and the comgressman cuts him short and says, "No. What makes your rockets go up is funding."

Of course a Moon base is technologically feasible. Goodness, if we're just talking technological feasibility we should be able to be a lot more imaginative than that. (Project Orion, anyone?).

But unless someone "salts" the Moon with gold nuggets (I believe it's in Carl Sandburg's The People, Yes in which someone starts a rumor that there's gold on the Moon, and so many people start heading for the Moon that the person who started the rumor figures there must be something in it after all and joins them) I don't see how it's going to happen.

(Another nugget from The People, Yes "Another baby in Cuyahuga County, Ohio--why did she ask: 'Papa, what is the moon supposed to advertise?'" I'd give a nickel to know whether Heinlein read that before writing "The Man who Sold the Moon.")

Re:If anyone colonizes the Moon

[burns210]

It seems odd that we can spend 400 billion dollars on defense in a year, but not have NASA be doing 10x the work they do now....

Why can't we spend 20 billion less (what is that, a couple stealth bombers?) and get:
*NASA sending a probe a month to mars, or the OTHER 7 PLANETS
*build a better ISS.
*colonize the moon
*colonize mars
*put a big honkin telescope(or an array of them!) on the moon/mars.
*mine moon/mars for resources(water, building materials?, ore???)
*have a launchpad on the moon, since it would be less fuel intensive to launch from there
*build a space shuttle that kicks ass. that can easily takeoff/land/look cool without needs major repairs after every mission.
*or...

those might not seem practical, but why not? the advancement of science shouldn't be determined by profitability of a given project.

Re:If anyone colonizes the Moon

[PeteyG]

Because that 20 billion would come straight out of certain states' economies... so there's good reason for those congresscreatures to not be enthusiastic about it.

That, and with all the stuff the military is doing nowadays (troll about whether or not that stuff is justified and you die), Congress is likely to only increase military spending so the military doesn't get spread too thin.

*sigh* If only there were hostile space aliens...

Look up your selenology and physics too

[Spamalamadingdong]

(that word in the subject means "study of the moon", in case you were wondering.)

Quoth the poster:

First off, the moon could be set up as a base to launch more investigative, futher expeditions into our solar system. (prolly for cheaper, cuz it wouldn't cost as much to blast off from the moon, due to lower gravity)

Wrong. Getting to the moon is about as expensive as getting to Mars, more or less, largely because Mars has an atmosphere that you can use to brake against for free. Only a fool would go to the Moon, stop there, then launch off again to go to Mars; for one thing, you're much more efficient doing your boosting near the bottom of a gravity well rather than at the top of one (em vee squared, dude).

Second of all, perhaps there will be a different set of minerals up there that we could start mining and build stronger, yet lighter materials.

The Moon is largely made up out of minerals we are quite familiar with here on ol' Terra, and nature has done us a favor by differentiating them using water-based sorting processes which don't exist on Luna. You should do some studying of the subject; not only might you learn something, you might put yourself in a position to actually contribute something useful.