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Forget Mars. Should We Go To The Moon?
me98411 writes "We have discussed earlier about the President's Commission on Moon, Mars and Beyond and about how a direct trip to Mars is the way to go (or way not to). In a BBC article, the division in the astronomers and space geeks community about the use of the Moon as a base to develop ways to travel to Mars is highlighted. Now, Nature is asking: Should we go back to the moon? Is a manned mission to the moon even necessary?"
Doesn't this, in a way, come down to an issue of long-term goals for space exploration? The costs of putting up a station of sorts on the moon would no doubt be immensely costly. If we just plan to run a few missions to Mars, it really doesn't seem very cost-effective. If someone has solid numbers I'd like to see how the distance moon/Earth would be to further planets such as Jupiter or Neptune. Also how big of a factor is the gravity difference in the long run for travel. If we could turn a station on the moon into a pseudo-colony, I think that would have some nice potential for space travel and perhaps even more affordable space tourism.
( o ) one could say I'm rather baked
Should we go to the moon: No. It is expensive and dangerous.
A more realistic question should be will we go back to the moon: Yes we will eventually.
People like to explore. Many people died colonizing the Americas, but we kept at it until it stuck. The moon is just the next step in this process. We, as humans, want to learn and explore. We want to go to the moon and to Mars. Because we want to we will eventually.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I imagine a scenario were unmanned ships send a lot of bits on successive low cost missions, and then astronauts go to set up and service the kit.
I'm ignorant on these matters, but it would appear to be to be much easier to set up kit on the moon than it is floating in space on a shuttle lifeline.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
I can't see any point, but people keep telling me it is of great political importants. I can't see why, so I suppose that is why I'm not a politician.
The article is talking about using the Moon as a base for travelling to Mars. If this would help efforts to go to Mars (Which is a Good Thing), then, yes, sure, using the Moon like that would be great.
Other points it raise show that some scientists think it is useless (Quote: "In short, we should ask whether dirt and gravity offer any general value to astronomy. The answer, I believe, is no."). This is countered, in the article by saying that we will to do tests on The Moon without interference from things from the earth.
Well, I think I've been converted. There is a point!
- Jax
As far as materials for the construction of colonisation fleets are concerned, the moon is always going to be the obvious choice, since why build hundreds of ships on earth in high gravity when you can build the ships in the no-atmosphere low-gravity nearby, materials-rich moon.
It's sitting there, just waiting for us to make it a resource.
Bring on improvements in nanite materials science, control and design.
I'd much rather have my tax dollars going for something like space exploration than into some Ponzi scheme like "Social Security" that I'll never see a dime from.
If the government is going to flush my $$ down the toilet, at least do it on something that will be in the history books millenia from now.
What the hell do you think people a few thousand years from now are going to be reading about in their history books? About how Al Gore really won the 2000 election? About how George Bush lied about WMD? Hardly, despite all the self-absorbed carping from the positive-reinforcement-left-wing lunatics of US politics.
Folks thousands of years from now won't know about the late 20th century as the time when two superpowers engaged in a cold war - they'll know it as the time Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on another celestial body.
Everything else is just noise.
Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt had a wonderful editorial in Aviation Week and Space Technology a couple of weeks ago, which is similar to this testimony before Congress. In it he laid out an arguably sound economic case for mounting a large-scale mission to the moon to mine Helium 3.
Helium 3 is present in abundance on the moon, and on a per-pound basis could be one of the most valuable substances there is. Assuming that one really could catalyze nuclear fusion in power reactors using Helium 3, it could have profound implications -- allowing us to move beyond hydrocarbon fossil fuels (although, ironically, you'd still need those fuels to power the rockets to the moon.)
I'd seen pie-eyed schemes for going to the moon for the Helium 3 before, but Schmitt really tries to nail it down, and answer most obvious criticisms. It's definitely worth a read.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
The Antarctic Treaty largely prohibits this:
Basically, any current territorial claims are ignored, and future claims are prohibited. In any event - it's seriously cold!
...this post brought to you courtesy of Wikipedia
This is where the serious fun begins.
Actually, conditions being what they are on the two bodies, and technology being what it is today, it's actually *easier* to get to the surface of Mars than the surface of the Moon (from LEO, it's 4.5 km/s Delta-V for Mars vs. 6.0 km/s for the Moon), and Mars is a safer place once you're there.
Just a shameless plug really, since I wrote it, but everyone here ought to check out The Mars Society FAQ. Lots of good info on this topic, verified by Dr. Robert Zubrin himself.
How To Get Humans To Mars
Private industry won't do it because there's absolutely no return on investment. The moon is a airless dust ball and Mars is an airless rock ball. The only good scientific question involved is "was there once life on Mars". That can be answered best by unmanned probes.
George Bush made his "moon base then mars" initiative for a few reasons:
1) Make it seem like he has a grand vision of anything during the election year.
2) The media will compare it to JFKs moon speech.
3) His friends in the defense contractor industry will see tens of billions of dollars.
If Bush actually had any vision, he would announce a Space Elevator iniative and try to fundamentally change how we get people and supplies into space.
-B
I agree, and the thing with trying any new technology is that you never know where it'll lead. Say we try for the moon and put off mars. We may lean some new tricks that will effect how we go to mars in the future. The worst thing to do is sit round and do nothing.
Yes, but on Mars you have the option of launching a return vessel with empty fuel tanks and filling them up with native materials when you get there. No such luck on the moon.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
We have the money, except now it's going to blowing things up and then rebuilding them. Why not just build things, and save the expense of blowing them up?
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
You forget that the Moon has no atmosphere, whereas Mars has CO2 in abundance. With 19th-century chemistry, we can turn 6 tonnes of liquid H2 into enough water and breathable oxygen for a two-year stay, and enough methane and oxygen to fuel a return trip. If we go to the moon, however, we have to bring all of our mass with us, and are much more likely to be constrained to "footprints and flags." Dr. Robert Zubrin's book The Case For Mars outlines a "Mars Direct" mission using Apollo-era technology with a few more modern updates to launch a series of reliable, safe, and high-scientific-value missions to the Red Planet. In the book, he makes an amazing case for why the Moon is a waste of time.
I attended his talk at the 20th International Space Symposium last week, and both he and Sean O'Keefe (head of NASA) outlined how this can be done within the framework of NASA's current budget. "Wildly expensive" only comes into play if you decide to build an orbiting space dock and assemble a giant Star Cruiser with nuclear-electric engines.
As for supplying a moon base, where will they get
1) food?
2) water?
3) oxygen?
And don't forget the 2-week day/night cycle that makes growing plants on the moon impractical. Mars has a near-Terran day, seasons, and an atmosphere that plants would thrive in. Intuitively, you're right: the moon's closer, it should be simpler. Read Dr. Zubrin's book, and you'll realize that you've got a lot of misconceptions.
GHWB also had a problem with the "vision thing" and came up with similar smoke and mirrors about Mars before his own doomed election effort in 1992. As an indication of his insincerity, he put Dan Quayle in charge of the effort.
Bush, a chip off the old block, is a proven liar and doesn't deserve a second chance. Twelve more soldiers killed today. He should be indicted.
I was lucky enough to see a debate on this topic this past Saturday between Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye (yes, the Science Guy) at the National Science Teachers Assn. conference. Dr. Tyson is on the GWB commission, so he was pushing manned exploration, and Nye was pushing for expanded robotic exploration.
They both made excellent points for their own side, I really came out on Nye's side... we had a "compelling reason" for going to the moon - to beat the "Godless Commies." As much as we like to think of our species as explorers, we don't generally take the physical or financial risk unless there is equal profit from it. Until we have something that will give us gain equal to the risk, there will never be the political will (driven by the will of voters) that we need to support it.
What are compelling reasons? Someone already brought up He3 - but if fusion becomes a reality and an economy forms that runs on the stuff, NASA won't need to go to the Moon to get it, the energy companies will on their own. For Mars - the discovery of current or past life would likely be a good enough reason. Nye points out that our best chance of making that initial discovery is with robots. Send people to do the more complex work that will come later.
While I disagreed with Dr. Tyson and the commission's plan, I walked away with new respect for the man (who I haven't really liked due to the whole Pluto thing). He made his case well and is fighting passionately for it. He admitted that the commission has had to so some "smoothing over" of things in GWB's speach that were "physically impossible," specifically the part about the benefits of landing on the Moon on the way to Mars. I like the idea of moving money from the shuttle towards a "space plane" or the like, but I don't like how pure science will suffer in the meantime.
A lunar base could solve some of the problems regarding material launch costs. The mars ship could be boosted from earth empty, and loaded with fuel produced on the moon. Ditto oxygen and water, possibly food. With the possibility of having all the fuel you could want waiting in orbit, the mars mission would then have the luxury of using a more fuel intensive profile.
Since it costs roughly the same to earth launch a kilo of fuel as it does to launch a kilo of equipment, it makes sense to just send up the stuff that is too difficult to make off earth.
The primary focus of such a base would be to produce and stockpile materials for later use. I'd like to see solar furnaces used to produce aluminum and glass. Waste gasses (which would include a large percentage of oxygen) could be captured and refined. Water is another material that would be fairly easy to fabricate.
Since most of the production could be monitored and controlled from earth, only a small crew would be required on-site.
Materials produced could be combined with equipment from earth to build facilities for getting the bulk material into lunar orbit.
The base could have a small staff, whose primary function would be keeping a small fleet of remote control machinery running.
Minimal communication lag would allow earth based operators to control and monitor virtually all important systems in near real time.
No environment to trash means simple and effective methds for producing required materials on site. Water, fuel, oxygen, metals and more can be had.
Supporting a mars mission is not reason enough to build a lunar base. It would need to serve other purposes as well. The base itself would be an ideal place to test and refine the technology for doing real work. The base would also facilitate scienttific research like astronomy.
So we could have 3 majors wins:
And to push greatly the analogy, if that supermarket is completely bare while you get daily drops of food and water on that raft, then you're better off in the raft. This analogy is terrible. It dismisses the obvious problem. That the Moon is a light second away from Earth and only a few days by space while Mars is months away. The same effort that establishes a human presence on Mars would establish with a greater safety margin a better presence on the Moon.
However, while Mars' atmosphere protects Martian explorers from solar flares, there is no such guarantee on the Moon. A solar flare that occurred in August, 1972 would have killed any astronauts on the moon; nobody on earth (except the astronomers!) even noticed it. Mars explorers would be safe from solar radiation; moon explorers would be risking death (and guaranteeing a higher occurrence of cancer) every day they spent out-of-doors on the moon.
Solar radiation isn't a mysterious thing that can't be predicted or shielded against. You would routinely have hours or days to prepare for it (the key preparation is to stay indoors on bad days). Further, those astronauts on the Moon wouldn't have spent a substantial time in a riskier radiation environment to get to the Moon.
If the moon is the beginning, you've already made your mistake. I just hope I'm not the astronaut who has to die to prove you wrong.
There's one killer advantage (no pun intended) currently to development on the Moon. It is only a light second away from Earth. That means that you can access much more easily the resources of Earth whether it be emergency supplies or teleoperators (ie, cheap labor) for robotic equipment. Further, you can respond much faster to changing economic conditions and deliver orders faster than on Mars. The low gravity on the Moon and its location means that it's a lot easier to put products into Earth orbit than any other large body in the Solar system. The only thing that would be significantly better would be an asteroid in Earth orbit.
Further, when development of Mars finally occurs, the Moon has a better delta v to Mars than Earth does.
My point is not that Mars should be sacrificed for lunar exploration. I believe it is well-demonstrated that Mars warrants human exploration and eventual settlement. Sooner is better. I just don't think there's a rational reason to go "first" to either the Moon or Mars. Both should be developed simultaneously so that we can apply lessons from one environment to other environments. You should remember though that the Moon will have earlier economically viable enterprise.
In addition, I think we ought to explore deep sea habitation. That has the advantage that it's clearly safer than any nonterrestrial environment yet suffers from many of the same difficulties that living in outer space will endure. Further launch costs are cheaper and there are good economic reasons (eg, mining) to investigate how people can live in the environment.
Selfish to what? I don't recall any contract with the Universe much less one where the Universe "owes" me nothing, and I "owe" it nonexistence. As far as I am concerned, the universe is there to be exploited by intelligent beings.
I consider sitting in one place for several hundred million years and dying with the solar system to be colossally self-destructive behavior and completely unworthy of an intelligent race. Perhaps you don't mind wasting the time, but I do.
1. "Stranded" refers to the time in transit - NOT on Mars. Over the course of the trip to mars the astronauts will be exposed to moon like conditions.
2. I haven't done the math on the delta V. however - something tells me that it just ain't workin' out. Namely becuase the acceleration of gravity on the moon is significantly less than mars. The total energy expended to get from the surface of the earth and to the surface of mars would need to be higher than the total energy for a trip from earths surface to the moon and back.
3. "At least on Mars you can make your own supplies from Hydrogen feedstock." This is PURE speculation that you can A. create this technology in a reasonable amount of time B. deploy it sucessfully on another planet C. operate it reliably for the duration of the mission. And don't say it's already "built", becuase while we might the technology we still have to engineer it into a package that can be deployed to Mars - most likely in an automated fashion.
4. Clearly you don't understand what I was saying about testing exposure. Of course the moon doesn't have an atmosphere. The ship that carries the astronauts will be exposed to solar radation much in the same way people on the moon will. In fact MUCH of the trip to and from mars will be similar to living on the moon.
I'm not so much concerned about living on Mars really. I don't think that is really the issue. Generally speaking the conditions on Mars would be easier to engineer equipment for than the moon. The real issue, is the trip. The moon offers the opportunity to test new technologies we would eventually deploy on other planets.
I've said it before; probes can't colonise. And I think colonising planets is a survival advantage which is important enough to keep funding human exploration alongside robotic-exploration.
Saying 'but let's wait untill things get cheaper' is a non-argument: one can ALWAYS say that, because, even if hardware becomes a hundredfold cheaper, it STILL will be more expensive to send humans, and by that time, robots will be so flexible that they rival or surpass humans.
But that's not the point; unless we send self-replicating intelligent robots that we consider to be our heirs, and sit back and die out as a species ourselves, we STILL have to continue exploring and colonising planets.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
First of all Hubble wasn't over ambitious. The mirror was accidentily formed in a hyperbolic profile instead of a parabolic one. It was a silly mistake, not some giant technical hurdle that needed to be overcome (albeit I bet the guys responsible for making the mirror must've felt pretty damn stupid when the space shuttle was up there fixing their handiwork). I'll agree with you though that the russians raced to space the quickest way possible. Fair enough.
But in todays modern age, the only reason we're going back to the moon is because the Chinese have a blitzkrieg space program planned, and the US doesn't want to appear like they're falling behind the times. It's another dick measuring contest. Plain and simple.
Those who argue there's water and other precious alloys on the moon should seriously give their heads a shake. Yes there's titanium, but it's locked in ore. Good luck extracting that without a giant refinery! And the water argument seriously has me angry. Have any of you read the scientific data on the water issue? It's inconclusive people. The last satellite found SMALL water emission lines for water located near one of the poles, and hasn't been found by any radio telescope to date, signifying that it's either below the crust (IE useless) or so small that we better be damn sure we survey the area before any long term commintments like a lunar staging point for a mars mission is even considered. And that's the plan (the probe part at least). A new probe will go up just to verify if there's water on the moon, but even if it does, this is a SMALL portion of the moon which doesnt get much sunlight, which could be a risky place for astronauts to be. All of the appollo missions were placed where the light levels would be not too hot (like the face pointing towards the sun which was several hundred degrees too warm) and where they wouldn't be too low (IE in the shadow of the earth or the dark side of the moon which is WELL below freezing). In other words, all previous manned missions were done near twilight so that the astronauts would freeze or fry. And now you expect them to suddenly place these people on the frozen depths of the moon!?! I think a lot of consideration has to go into this moonbase deal before they start committing to it.
If you want to get to mars, nuclear powered ion drives are my best bet. They're a bit slower, but the efficiency over traditional chemical engines is huge. I expect the next generation space probes like the Jupiter Icy Moon Orbiter to validate their effectiveness. If you've never heard of it, I suggest you read the nasa fact sheet:
http://spacescience.nasa.gov/missions/JIMO.pdf
Anyways time will tell how it all goes down.
Hundreds of US soldiers have died in Iraq
But Americans don't consider those acceptable. You're talking about a situation where the public has been made to fear that if they don't do this, we'll lose 3000 more people to another Trade Center. Better to send troops to kill those nasty terrorists than risk getting blown up at the mall.
Watch some commercials. How many are telling people that 'if you don't buy our product, this -bad thing- might happen to you'. We scare people to sell things.
Nobody is afraid of space. So they aren't willing to pay to see someone blown up on national TV.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman