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?"

Comments

long term.

[bagel2ooo]

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.

Re:long term.

[Trurl's Machine]

Of course it CAN be done. Why not? We can get there, we can get food there, we can get power and life support systems there. There are research bases in Antarctica, there are research bases underwater. What are you rambling about??

There is a difference between a base and a colony. I don't deny a technical possibility of a Lunar base - just as there is a possibility of an orbital base. However, just as the International Space Station is not a colony, a hypothetical lunar outpost won't be one either. In order to be called a colony, it would have to possess at least some rudimentary independence of the supplies from Earth. And so far this seems unlikely.

Short answer: No.

[secondsun]

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.

Re:Short answer: No.

[gravelpup]

Voice-over narrator:
So the robot boats went and did their exploring. Some came back, some didn't. And the people were very glad they had not sent humans on such a dangerous trip. Plus, the robots were much cheaper anyway. They had plenty of gold to spend on better printing presses so the children could learn to read, and better cobblestones for the streets so the people could go to the market in comfort. They even cured the Black Death. Everyone was happy in their comfortable utopia.

450 years later, a little German guy with a funny mustache starts a ruckus and wipes out all of European civilization*, and the little robot sailboats across the scary sea weren't much help.



*Some of you may not find this such a bad thing. That, however, is outside the scope of this analogy.

Lunar astronomy

[MrIrwin]

How good would a Lunar astronomy be? Having no atmosphere would seem to be a great bonus, and allthougth there **is** the problem of gravity on the lenses, this gravity is much less.

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.

Mining moon for Helium-3

[Thagg]

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

Re:Antarctica!

[I confirm I'm not a]

The Antarctic Treaty largely prohibits this:

The main objective of the ATS is to ensure in the interests of all mankind that Antarctica shall continue forever to be used exclusively for peaceful purposes and shall not become the scene or object of international discord. The treaty ... also defers the question of territorial claims asserted by some nations and not recognized by others.

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

Mars First, Then Moon

[schnarff]

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.

Re:Should *WE* go to the moon?

[Paulrothrock]

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?

A few considerations

[Anonymous Coward]

Aside from questions of the human need to explore and the possible economic and scientific benefits of human exploration/colonization of the solar system (including of course the moon and mars), we need better propulsion systems than we have now. Even though the moon seems to be the best stepping-stone to further exploration, we still have to get out of Earth's gravity-well to get there. With chemical propulsion this is and always will be just on the edge of economically impossible (i.e. extremely expensive therefore almost impossible). In addition to that, with chemical propulsion everything in the solar system, including the Moon, is very far away. Orion-type nuclear pulse propulsion systems are at the very least politically impossible right now. Ian Wright was quoted in the Nature article as saying: "To not travel beyond our planet would be like living a few hundred years ago and not wanting to explore new continents." The Europeans didn't explore the world until they had ships which were up to the task. To me it seems that the better expenditure would be on research into better propulsion.

Bush lies

[daminotaur]

The GWB Mars plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on. He (or rather his scriptwriter) is no more sincere about really mounting such an effort than W's daddy was. He just had to say something coincident with the release of the Rogers report on the Columbia disaster. So what policy changes did he really suggest? Cancellation of all current space efforts (Shuttle, Hubble, Space Station, many other NASA projects, ASAP). In other words, his actions are isomorphic to what a frank space opponent would do. To appear "visionary" and not just like a Luddite space exploration opponent, he finessed it by coming up with a dishonest Moon/Mars scheme that will never happen. Proof of the plan's vaporware nature is that there was no mention of this "vision" in the State of the Union speech that occurred the very same week.

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.

drama? More then that

[N3wsByt3]

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.

Re:Exploring

[llefler]

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.