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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."
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Just after I get my flying car!
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.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Can I buy some land there? :)
I think it would be technologicly feasable to have people living on the moon in 20 years, but I don't think there will be a financial inscentive for the huge cost.
As x approaches total apathy I couldn't care less.
it will be China or India. The United States seriously lacks the resolve (or the infrastructure) to go to the Moon.
Maybe 20 years from now, we'll be surpassed in space and get shamed into exploring again.
no thanks
according to a leading lunar scientist
That was supposed to be "loony" scientist.
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Why couldn't we have had humans living on the moon 20 years ago? Is there a technological reason? Afterall we could keep humans alive on the moon for a matter of days, all we'd have to do is launch frequent resupply missions and they'd be just dandy up there. Not really much different from the space station, except you get the added bonus of SOME gravity so maybe your bones won't complete decalicfy while you're up there. But there really are not pending technological obsticals to a moon base.
Now, weather a moon base is practical, usefull, or economically feasable is a whole another ball of wax, and the answers are probably all "no". What the hell are you going to do up there? I would like to have a ham radio linear transponder up there, but other than that what is the moon really good for? It can't be a RELIABLE communications satellite because it's only in the sky half the time and is very far away with a very high latency. It's got some rocks and minerals but nothing that would be worth flying back down to earth. Scientific research I suppose, but what could you do on the moon that you can't do on the space station for a lot less money, due to it being so much closer? Yea yea, a jumping off point for a Mars mission. See above, what is really the point to going to Mars? We still don't have the propulsion technology to make frequent Mars trips a practical reality.
One thing that could be a lucritive source of income for a moon base would be moon tourism. Perhaps the science could use it to fund itself, a la the russions and the space station.
IMO, before we even think about a moon base, we need to think long and hard about what the fuck we're going to do with it. Send more probes, shit send a thousand probes. Don't send big dumb expensive probes, send little cheap insectiod probes. Do the same to Mars. If there's something interesting there, we'll find it that way.
I know I know, if people said what I've said about the new world the US wouldn't be here. But the analagy with space is a little different. The "new world" was just another continent on earth. It had air, water, arible land, native people for which to enslave and abuse. Mars is a giant inhospitible desert with some frozen CO2 at the poles. Its possible we've overlooked something, but again it's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier to send probes.
If someone wants to squander their personal fortune on manned missions to Mars/Moon, go for it, but I'd rather my tax dollars be spent more efficiently.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
"...acording to a leading Lunatic Scientist"
somehow I don't think there is going to be a colony on the moon by 2023, I say we are lucky if we get a man back to the moon by then....
sigh....
--meh--
The article mentions: "The craft will make an x-ray map of the moon" in regards to the probe being sent by tht ESA. How, praytell, are they going to do that? You have to have a receptor on the other side of the x-ray beam, don't you? I mean, it's not like *radar* is it? Not the last time I looked...
So, what are they going to do, beam x-rays through the moon down to a receptor on earth or vice-versa? Somehow I doubt they'd get very accurate pictures.
Are they going to have the craft drop a plate off on one side of the planet, zoom across to the other side and take the picture?
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Is the "15 months" trip due to the ionic propulsion method ?
I believed that "traditionnal" engines could send people on the moon in two days.
Anyone can explain ?
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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.")
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On Earth 1 or 2 people die and we start inventing things to keep more from dying.
The Sol system is a little less friendly. A comet or other planet wide disaster is more likely to kill a very large portion of the planet, and totally destroy it's manufacturing infrastructure.
It would be far better to have a self sustaining economy away from Earth, one that could help rebuild our planet if BAD THINGS were to happen to it.
Before we can have a s.s. economy in space, we need to take first steps. We need to put people up there and find out what they need based on the circumstances, then we invent it and move on to the next thing.
The moon hopefully will provide enough resources for those living there to create what they feel they need.
As to your tax dollars, c'mon man, wouldn't you say your grand children being able to take a shuttle trip or elevator ride to the moon would be a good thing?
We should have been on the moon 20 years ago. Right now, we should be focusing on colonizing and mining the asteroid belt. I for one am glad other countries are bragging about what they're going to accomplish. maybe that'll finally get the US off its butt.
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The moon is a great place to send criminals. Send 'em there for life as involuntary colonists. Let 'em dig big caves.
As they dig those big caves they can grind the rock up for soil, melt pockets of ice that they find and use the water to grow wheat.
You put the wheat in big metal capsuls and you use a magnetic catapult to chuck the wheat down the gravity well to good ol' earth.
don't you read?
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
For one reason: He3.
Read Enterning Space.
1KG of He3 is worth $6 million.
Transportation costs to space and manufacturing processes need to come together...oh yeah, and we need to figure out that whole fusion thing. But once we're there, science knows of no better energy source (outside of anti-matter).
Good enough reason for me.
A speech...
and very timely:
Getting power from the moon.
More details at Space.com.
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Quoth the poster:
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).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.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
Starting haphazardly.
:) After it lifts off, depending on the direction, it is doing two things - first, it is escaping from Earth's gravity, and second, it is changing its orbit. You don't have to "add" the escape velocities onto the necessary orbital delta-V. If you wanted it to actually reach a circular orbit, that takes a lot more work, actually!
The delta-v quoted by your source is far lower than the delta-v needed to get into a Hohmann transfer orbit even from free space in a circular solar orbit at Earth's radius (which the C3=0 orbit is the equivalent of). As the Hohmann orbits are the lowest energy transfer orbits that don't require slingshots from other bodies, I question the values on that figure.
Ah, there's your problem. The C3=0 orbit is NOT a circular orbit at Earth's radius. It's a parabolic orbit with Earth at its focus, which necessarily can NOT be a circular orbit about the Sun at Earth's radius. A parabolic orbit means that at infinity, it will have no velocity relative to the Earth, which means, if the craft traveled to infinity, it would then have the equivalent orbital velocity of Earth. Problem is, it never reaches infinity, as it's not a two-body system, since the Sun's there.
If you want a spacecraft to be in a circular orbit at Earth's radius, well, it doesn't have to do anything - just stay home. It already is in one.
This is the problem when you're doing "you need to add an extra 5.03 + 2.38 km/s" - you're adding the Lunar escape velocity and the Martian escape velocity, which you do not need to do, because you're not exactly going to infinity. On the return, you can easily aerobrake in Earth's atmosphere as well to enter lunar orbit.
Also don't forget about aerobraking! No matter what, any time you approach a planet (even entering lunar orbit! you can always place your perigee inside Earth's atmosphere with clever timing!) if you need to slow down, it's free.
And if you don't like that site, how about here, which shows that Deimos is more accessible than the Moon (and shows a delta-V from Mars surface to Lunar surface of 8.0 km/s, not 13.0 km/s).
Or here, where you'll note that "LEO to Mars" is a delta-V of 4.8 km/s, not the 5.6 km/s you're claiming - this is because, of course, it's in LEO, and therefore has some orbital velocity about Earth (and is therefore traveling at -greater- than Earth's orbital velocity at certain points).
I can continue to give examples if you want - the point is that from the Moon, it's easier to get to Mars and back than it is to get to Earth and back.
The easiest way to think about this is simple: You do not need to actually escape Earth orbit in order to reach Mars. A highly eccentric orbit can include both Earth and Mars (if both were stationary, obviously - they're not, so you can't orbit them, but you can of course use that path to transfer between them), and so must necessarily take less energy than the escape velocity of Earth+the escape velocity of Mars (which reaches Mars by going through infinity).
Interestingly enough, Hohmann transfers are not lowest energy. Google for "interplanetary superhighway", which is a relatively recent discovery. Really does suck that the 3-body system isn't analytically solvable...