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The Case for the Moon
apsmith writes "Continuing the flurry of recent hearings on the future of humans in space, a Senate committee on Thursday heard testimony in favor of a return to the Moon. Former senator and moon-walker Harrison Schmitt and physicist David Criswell see the lunar surface as an immense energy resource, just waiting to be tapped. Astronomer Roger Angel sees the lunar south pole as the ideal astronomical observatory, with locations for telescopes 100 times better than anything we've done so far. And geologist Paul Spudis sees a lot of unfinished business on the Moon, to develop it as the "feedstock of an industrial space infrastructure." TransOrbital also sent written testimony."
I'm not a space nut, but why did NASA stop going to the moon in the first place? Its been a couple decades since our last moon landing, no?
Each in due time. Start with the Moon and Mars. Eventually we'll (personally) explore the whole galaxy...
This persecution of the moon must stop.
Even the combined historical damage of tides, werewolves and lunacy cannot justify our behaviour towards our misunderstood neighbor.
Let us hear its case.
lysergically yours
Sure, no problem. Just run a power line from there to here.
There are large quantity of mineral and oxygen chemically stored in the crust of the moon. In another word, one nice place to do mining operation.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
...folowing by USSR was bad new for US space science.
Send a chinese in space, and all of a sudden, space is interesting.
Can americans be rulled without an official enemy ?
This doesn't have anything to do with China's manned space mission, does it? I mean, now that China's got a man up in space (albeit temporarily), the USA wants its domination of space back?
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I feel that most of the advantages mentioned for another moon project would also apply to a large expanse of oceanfront property I've had my eye on near Cancun, given a sufficient level of government support. I even have a white paper detailing the implementation, at a far reduced cost. Oh, and the command center would be *so* sweet...
(A libertarian with karma to burn... whaddya expect...?)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The moon is the next logical step for humanity. Why? Because its close, mainly. A permanant base on the moon will allow us to reach the rest of the solar system easier. There are tons of resoures that can be tapped on the moon, helium-3, for instance. Once we are on the moon, Mars, Jupiter's moons, and the asteroid belt would seem like reasonable destinations for humanity. We are so rapidly using up our resources here on earth, that is no alternatives are found, we will be doomed. Sure the costs and teh risks are astronomical (no pun intended), but the rewards should surely outweigh any such cost. The trick will be finding someone to foot the bill in order to get started.
in-sig-nificant
Probably one of my favorite Astronomy Professors at the University of Arizona. He's never satisfied with the status quo. I know of other projects he's spearheaded, and he is always pushing the envelope of Astronomical Engineering.
Ideas like "faster" mirrors for sky surveys (and asteroid watching) - where the limitation is that the mirror would gather so much information at once, its too fast for modern computers to process, and modern busses to transport.
This is just one more example of ideas he's been dotting over.
*Carlos: Exit Stage Right*
"Geeks, Where would you be without them?"
"Got Linux?"
C'mon man - the cheese. What about the cheese. Geez.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
We really went to the moon the first time?
Beaming power all the way from the moon is one of the most stupid ideas I've heard. If you want solar energy that badly, you can mine the moon for materials but the most logical place for the solar collectors is Earth orbit. You'd get an order of magnitude better efficiency by not transmitting power over such an enormous distance.
But the article is facetious from the start; they claim the "only" way to keep up with power demand is through solar power. Whatever happened to nuclear? Reactors would easily cover any power demands for the next few centuries -- the next few millennia, if we ever get over the stupid dislike for breeder reactors.
The extreme (!) cost per pound to ship things by space shuttle would have to be dealt with before mining would be a possibility. Unless you're talking about mining the moon for use on the moon.
Mars is where we need to go. I agree that NASA does need some goal if they are ever going to do anything useful again but if they're going to set a goal, it should at least set a potentially habitable planet as a goal with the Moon as a sub goal or a proof of concept.
.pdf) and the proposed Bill from Congressman Nick Lampson TX to restore Mars as a goal and put NASA on a schedule. Here are a few sample letters if you want to write your congressman.
Robert Zubrin, president of Pioneer Astronautics and founder of the Mars Society has called for the mobilization of Mars exploration proponents to write their representatives on the future of post-Columbia NASA. From his announcement: 'This debate will play out over the next six months, and the result could determine the future of the American space program in our generation. Now is the time when anyone who cherishes hopes for a spacefaring future for humanity must step forward and speak up.'
This is happening alongside the recent testimony Zubrin gave to the full Senate Commerce Committee on Oct 29th (audio files here and the
Blaze a trail to the New World
For anyone interested, this story's author, apsmith, also wrote a longer, more detailed version of this story entitled "Politicians Catch The Space Bug", available here. It's an excellent read.
Looking for political forums? Check out "The World Forum".
There is also supposed to be a lot of Helium-3 which many scientists consider an excellent fuel for a fusion reactor.
"The Case for Mars", which makes the arguement that we should ignore the moon and instead head on out to the fourth planet.
His arguements:
1) In terms of energy, it's easier to go to Mars from LEO than the moon. (Takes longer, though.)
2) Mars is a more interesting destination: because it has an atmosphere, a lot of engineering obstacles are solved because you can do all sorts of nifty engineering tricks to steal resources from the air.
3) The moon is dead, and has always been dead. Mars, on the other hand, perhaps even once supported life. With effort on our part, perhaps it could again.
Anyways, go to the Mars Direct site.
-Brett
After the final lunar landings in 1972, NASA and the nation were at a crossroads. We landed on the moon but this was partially to make sure the Russians did not do so first. With the "Great Society" in the works and Vietnam still raging, the space program was put on the back burner in favor or funding for social programs and military expenditures. Russia never went to the moon and it looks to be at least until 2010 before China might try, thus there was no political incentive to sacrifice pork projects or "social" programs in favor of expanded space projects.
Though the Space Shuttle was supposed to reduce space travel costs dramatically and allow for low-cost LEO (Low Earth Orbit) launches, the costs proved so much greater than expected that NASA spends most of its budget maintaining the aging fleet and is hard-pressed to spare the cash for developing new launch vehicles. It was thought that space stations launched via space shuttle would be used as waystations to revisit the moon, but as the shuttles cost so much to move around, that plan became bunk fairly quickly.
We must return to the moon. Its natural vacuum and near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing. Deadly plagues and other research requiring isolation could be done easily on our moon with minimal fear of contaminating the earth should their projects go awry. Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light (and for SETI et. al not so many electronic signals interfereing). If nothing else, the He-3 and solar resources could eventually help reduce our dependence on limited fossil fuels to run our economy. Some of the readers remember the OPEC crisis and no one wants those conditions to return. Finally, the moon serves as a waypoint to exploration of Mars and the Asteroid Belt, both of which contain abundant resources that could satiate our world's demands for resources far beyond the lifetimes of anyone reading this.
I'd like to hear from people who do not want to go back to the moon. Most of the soical programs they advocate funding in place of space exploration have their own difficulties, but maybe there are other reasons they have which get little/no attention.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
We definitely need a moonbase. It's going to get very expensive if we keep on launching probes from Earth. Imagine how much fuel you're wasting just to get something up to escape velocity. If we build a moonbase, and use that as an assembly/construction point, then we can dedicate that much more money to better sensor arrays, cameras, etc.
Not to mention, a moonbase is better than a space station because a space station has to correct it's orbit every so often, there's so much garbage in the space close to Earth, etc. At least the moon is a stable platform where we can build stuff on. Hell, perhaps we can find a cave or something and build laboratories inside that. That way, even if a rogue object hits the moon, the labs will be relatively safe.
We can also build better telescopes. Imagine a telescope on the moon. A scope on Earth has to contend with the irregularities of the atmosphere, etc. But a moon telescope, forget it. Clear view all the way to Andromeda.
What happened to all the dreams back in the 1970's? Wasn't there all sorts of notions about how soon man was going to have massive bases on the moon, etc? Now fast forward to 2003, oops sorry, no go.
.....is well put at this website.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
What exists on the Moon that cannot be found or created at a price tag magnitudes lower on the Earth?
When we talk about going to the Moon, we're talking about Billions of dollars. That being said, I'm a _HUGE_ space and astronomy nut, but I do not see how going there will improve anything other than our nationalism. Perhaps it may help open the way for future cost effective space travel, BUT we are by no means anywhere near the point where we can justify the govt subsidizing such expenditures because the gains are VERY far away.
Yes, space gave us Tang and Velcro but putting Shuttles into orbit and people on the Moon have not cured _any_ diseases. I would *love* to see Americans on the Moon again and I'd even be willing to help front the bill, BUT the Country does not consider this important.
near-constant illuminated surface allow for massive energy and chemical manufacturing...... .... Telescopes on the far side of the moon would give us a new view of the universe uninterrupted by light
The moon has a 29.5 day cycle meaning that places on the moon experience about 15 days of daylight and about 15 days of night. The far side of the moon gets just as much (and just as little) sunlight as the near side. Only radio telescopes would see a big advantage on the farside by using the moon to block the Earth's noisy radio chatter.
Its a minor point, but it does have implications for what you can do on the moon and the special engineering challenges of the environment (e.g., storing 15 days of solar power).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I've always thought the Moon would be a great place for a telescope, and he lays it all out in detail, including:
He does miss one trick, which is that the moon itself provides the stiff structure required for long-baseline interferometry, which would be necessary to image planets around other stars.
It's really nice to see this idea wrapped up in a neat package.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.
How far would $87 Billion gone towards development of a research outpost on the Moon?
I wish we had leaders that are looking up and beyond and not try to right personal vendettes at the expense or our future.
And BTW If deficits are o.k., which is what I have been hearing lately, why not go into hock for something for something with vision and with real lasting value.
Nope. That's the major difference between americans and sheeps:
- Sheeps need the leader;
- Americans need the leader AND the enemy.
If you don't like it then come to live in Europe - somehow they manage to live without an enemy AND without a leader too.Less is more !
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.
The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: "What are these guys in the big suits doing?"
One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, "Why certainly!" and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder's comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder's message to the moon. Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After he finally stopped laughing the translator relayed the message: "Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land."
include $sig;
1;
The Moon is just not worth it in terms of energy and materials - if you want solar collectors, a better place for them is in HEEO (highly elliptic Earth orbit), which experiences 99% sunshine, versus 50% for a location on the lunar surface. Add to that the difficulty in breaking down the highly oxidized lunar regolith, and the transporting the equipment to do so to the Moon, and you have one very expensive mining operation.
The Moon may be useful as a platform for observatories (both optical and radio), but it's important to recognize that those are not commercially viable enterprises.
Now, if you want to build things in space (solar collectors, colonies, etc), the best place to go looking for materials is the NEOs (Near Earth objects) that pass close to the Earth on a regular basis. About half of the NEOs out there are main belt asteriods that have had their orbits perturbed by Jupiter. The other half are extinct comets that have been pulled into short-term orbits and had all the ice in the first few meters of their surface removed. Between these two, you have everything you need: metals, organics, water, clays, salts, etc. All things that the Moon is severely lacking in. It has been remarked upon that the slag left over from processing the average NEO would be worht more than regolith.
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Vpered na Mars!
IMHO, throwing some money at nanotube research is a very good investment, considering the myriad applications. However, designing your entire space program around a technology that may never be possible seems overly risky.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Forget about energy, resources, or research.
You know everyone just wants to be able to get laid in zero G!
hell, maybe we should have mentioned this back when clinton was still president....
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
First off, the air pressure, gravity, sunlight, and temperature in the upper atmosphere on venus is very close to earth's. It also has a ton of carbon based chemichals for sustained life and oxygen in such an environment could be easially extracted. If fact it is the closest in the solar system to earth.
Even though the upper atmosphere is mostly sulfuric acid, dealing with that is a lot easier than dealing with the vacume of space, lack of gravity, extreme tempurature shifts and almost complete lack of extra hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon. A slightly pressurized oxygen baloon could easially float on it's own weight and sustain large city complexes, and if it leaked it could be fixed in due time and wouldn't immediately kill everybody.
But most importantly - life on venus would be self sustainable because there are loads of natural resources and absolutely no shortage of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and a variety of other elements. (not in raw form of course)
Earth First! (We can mine the other planets later.)
Seriously, has anyone given any thought to NOT fucking with the moon? I'm reminded of that episode of The Tick, where Chairface Chippendale carves his name into the moon with a giant laser.
Returning to the Moon should be our next step.
NO! NO! Mars is a much better place to go. The Moon is a pile of dead rock!
We need SSTO.
NO! NO! SSTO is too difficult and expensive! Expendables can do the job more cheaply until we've developed better technology.
Capsules are stupid, you have little control over your landing area.
Winged spacecraft are stupid! Wings are dead weight on the way up.
Coming down on rockets (Delta Clipper) is stupid. You have to carry your landing fuel up, and then down, again.
No concensus whatsoever. As a result, we either do NOTHING, or we do things halfway, and then change direction, which is WORSE.
IMHO, one thing the space station has taught us is that building and running a space station is HARD. If there's ONE piece of value we should get out of the ISS, it's how the heck we can do it BETTER, if we can just get a Next Time.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Mars may be cool but if you don't want to tranform the whole planet into second Earth there are almost no advantages of having Mars colonies compared to Moon colonies and there are many disadvantages caused by its distance from Earth. On average opositions it is 202 times farther from Earth than Moon and light travels a few minutes from it. It takes months for spaceprobes to travel to Mars during most favorable conditions.
It is important to explore Mars but its colonization is a completely different story.
Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!
We're not a presence in space because we can only go on camping trips there, and there's not much useful you can do on a camping trip other than take pictures of yourself among the beautiful scenery.
It's not enough to do camping trips. It's not enough to have an outpost that is continually restocked from home. It's not enough to have a self-supporting village out there. What is needed is a colony out there with the ability to build more colonies. Once we have a that, we can fill the space between the planets in the solar system. The reason to do that is to have more grandchildren.
We don't have the technology to build a self-supporting village, much less a colony that can build new colonies. The moon can give us raw materials, but I doubt that its gravity is enough to prevent long-term bone loss and muscle atrophy in humans. We should look into rotating structures for how to live in space. And we need to work on closed biosystems. We've made good progress on solar cells, computers, and robots in recent decades, which definitely helps.
Lets face it, its sunset for the US manned space program. Huge, bloated projects like the $90 billion Space Station, that might not even be completed. then endless introspection when there is an accident.
China has an efficient, working space program. They've cloned, and modernized the Soyuez, which is a much more cost-effective space vehicle than the space shuttle. And China has a national spirit for science. Its not like the US and Europe when leftists endlessly whine about hazards of progress and diversion of funds from social needs. And the US in a new Vietnam, an interminable war in Iraq and sinkhole for any economic surplus for science.
"Ruguo nimen yao fangwen yuhuan, bixu xuexi Zhongwen!"
The issue here is not whether Criswell's moonbeam project is the right project to pursue with public funds.
The issue is whether congress should be trying to buy off the technologists of the US, who are being outsourced into oblivion, with another sham space program -- especially when private efforts are starting to pick up steam on their own.
Just let NASA die a natural death.
Seastead this.
Amazing. This person is more on track than off track. And yet you W nazi boys will mod down anything the least bit critical of your feuhuer.
doesn't mean it's not funny (and/or telling).
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Stupid dislike of breeder reactors is holding back our progress, definitely.
Sincerely,
Iran and North Korea
When Apollo Mission Astronaut Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he not only gave his famous "One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind" statement, but followed it by several remarks, including the usual COM traffic between him, the other astronauts, and Mission Control. Before he re-entered the lander, he made the enigmatic remark "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky."
Many people at NASA thought it was a casual remark concerning some rival Soviet Cosmonaut. However, upon checking, [they found] there was no Gorsky in either the Russian or American space programs.
Over the years, many people have questioned him as to what the "Good luck, Mr. Gorsky" statement meant. On July 5, in Tampa Bay, FL, while answering questions following a speech, a reporter brought up the 26- year-old question to Armstrong. He finally responded. It seems that Mr. Gorsky had died and so Armstrong felt he could answer the question. When he was a kid, Neil was playing baseball with his brother in the backyard. His brother hit a fly ball which landed in front of his neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorksy. As he leaned down to pick up the ball, he heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, "Oral sex? Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon!"
For more details: snopes.com
A speech...
Mars should be the ultimate destination for the next 15 years, but the moon should be a launchpad. Set up a small outpost on the moon and expand it from that point to a tiny village until it becomes the biggest extraterrestrial city in the solar system (that we know of). The resources of the moon are invaluable in our world's future, for its demanding energy requirements can easily be met by He-3 fusion and beamed solar electricity.
He-3 is worth $4 billion/ton and there are over a million tons of it. That's $4 quadrillion dollars (yes, quadrillion). Not to mention the lower cost of solar array deployment and relatively easy delivery.
Let's not forget that the number of graduates in the science and math areas DOUBLED during the 1960's because people were inspired to study hard and do something amazing with their lives. For the past thirty years we've been inspired by "ancient" technologies of Apollo, including computers with CPUs slower than that in my PDA.
I would argue that the space program is what made America the technological epicenter that it is today, and a return to the moon and Mars would only rejuvenate interest in the sciences. I know it worked for me, and hell I have to watch Apollo 13 every few months to remind myself!
Let's just see what the nation's reaction is when a new NASA direction is declared. Also, the American MER landers are arriving this January, and from what I learned in my interview with lead scientist Steve Squyres, it's going to be quite a show. Get ready for the next space race, and America ought to take the lead. Why? I think it's in our nation's collective blood. America is a nation of pioneers and was founded as one, and there's a whole lot of universe left to explore.
Furthermore, I want my damn Millenium Falcon!
A telescope on the lunar south pole can only observe half the sky, while a telescope on the lunar equator can observe all the sky (during one month). So why is the south pole supposed to be an ideal place for telescopes?
Sure we could spend billions on a new space program but what if...
What if? That's not a good argument.
We already possess the core technologies - they won't be perfect, but they're there. Developing better/new tools should be emphasized, but not to the point of halting the development of applications that use these existing tools. Many times the two create a development cycle (developing a computer component on a computer, and then using that component on your next computer to develop better components which you'll use on your next...), in which case you can't ignore work in one area.
Those fancy applications are helpful by inpiring others to get involved in the develop of better methods and tools. Popular Science magazine is a good example.
This is not my sig.
He had been president for 7 months when the first moon landing occured in 1969. Nixon was asked by NASA in the early 1970s where he wanted to see the space program go.
The choices given to him were: Mars, a Moon Base, a cancelled program or The shuttle. Nixon chose the Shuttle, since, in (roughly) his words, he didn't "care about space, but it would look bad for the USA to end its space program"
Choice quote from the story link http://www.house.gov/science/press/108/108-144.htm from the House Commitee on Science:
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"DEBATE ON REGULATING SPACE TOURISM HEATS UP
WASHINGTON, D.C., Novenber 5, 2003 - Commercial human space flight (space tourism) is a burgeoning industry in need of some degree of government regulation and oversight a panel of witnesses told the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee today. Witnesses varied widely, however, on the extent of regulations and the need for government indemnification of space tourism launches."
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"Space tourism?" In reference to "commercial human space flight?" Their mindset is all wrong here... "Goverment indemnification?" The government is indemnified for pretty much anything they want to be indemnified for. That's why they have these things called "insurance companies." "Regulation and oversight?" Please don't turn the commercial space race into NASA-II.
I thought the topic was most elequently covered (at least to my satisfaction) in James P. Hoagan's "Rockets, Redheads, & Revolution", in the chapter about the race to the moon in the 60's and what it did to the US's economy, focus, and other factors like abandoned projects. (Sorry, I can't recall the chapter name now, and the book is at home... and I call myself a geek! Sheesh!)
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You don't need to see my sig. This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
I wonder who would own the moon in the case that scientist actually found a strong resource that would be invaluable here on Earth, or something along those lines. Every country that has a space program would head on up there and try to stake their claim at the moon, and even countries that didn't previously have a space program would probably develop one if there was a valuable resource on the moon to be gathered.
Which brings me back to my original question, who would own the moon?
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
It seems to me that many of the same Slashdotters ranting and raving against environmentalists, energy conservation, and solar power here on earth also are ardent proponents of colonizing the moon and the planets.
Why is solar power good if it is a light second away but bad if it is in much more accessible places like the Sahara desert? Why not first deploy solar power stations in the Sahara and then figure out how to do it on the moon?
And how do you think people are going to manage to live on the moon, where everything needs to be recycled, when we can't even manage to even keep our resource needs from growing disproportionately, let alone live in balance, here on earth?
I think manned space exploration is a waste of money and time. But perhaps there is one good thing that would come out of it: a lot of people would finally begin to understand what environmentalists have been saying all along.