US Plans Lunar Motel

OffTheLip writes "The US is planning to build a permanent lunar base which will support future visits to Mars. The living conditions on the moon presents a variety of challenges from medical to construction. Contingency planning would be critical but some feel the challenges presented on the moon will be less than Mars. The moon is closer to Earth, the atmosphere is less harsh and, unlike Mars, water does not exist. Is this the start of the next space race?"

Comments

Less challenges on the moon?

[metaomni]

The article makes a very good case for just the opposite -- the moon seems like it will be a much harsher locale for future astronauts, despite its closer location.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[Ardanwen]

I was also thinking. How come having water on a planet makes things more difficult. I know life on earth (70% water surface) is tough ;), but based on that last sentence, I'd say mars is the better place to be.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[cmowire]

Well, it depends on your point of view.

If you suffer from a power/oxygen/water/etc. system failure, all you need is a few weeks supplies in the shelter on the moon. Wheras, you need to ensure that at all points in time, you've got 2 years worth of shelter supplies on Mars.

Also, the lowered gravity and nearly-nonexistent atmosphere means that a moonsuit from the 60s still works out well enough.

Also, given that you have only 3 days outside of the earth's magnetosphere to get there, you'll accumulate a lot less radiation on the way there than you would going to Mars.

Of course, that also would require piling lunar soil and rocks on top of whatever the lunar base ends up being made out of to provide sufficent mass.

But, still... Because of all of these things, it's easier to get a toehold sooner on the Moon.

The problem is that NASA has yet to grasp the idea of a fully independent spacecraft. It works out reasonably well to have astronauts swap out complete assemblies in LEO, where you can send up and down the stuff, if you are talking about going to Mars or Io or Titan or even near-earth-asteroids, you are going to be too far to pull stunts like that. We barely know how to weld and solder in space and nobody's ever tried to make a set of machine shop tools for space like lathes and mills. The moon would be a great place to research such things, but that also depends on NASA breaking with tradition and not blowing a good chance yet again.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[gerf]

The moon has problems with being used as a base, this is true. But, you have to look at all the pros and cons.

The moon is close. Astronauts, vehicles, resupplies, or emergency equipment can reach the moon in a much shorter time span than Mars. Heck, even communications reach the moon in a couple seconds. Also, gravity is lower on the Moon, so launches from the Moon won't take all that much effort.

Mars possibly has more water resources to utilize. The thin atmosphere doesn't help much overall, other than blocking a few micrometeorites from causing damage. There is also dust on Mars, but probably not as harsh as that on the Moon, as it's been exposed to wind erosion for a long time now, and is assumed to be rounded in shape. Mars days also are a benefit, as opposed to the Moon, which rotates only as it orbits the Earth.

My opinion, though it matters not? I say we need to dig on the Moon. Expensive though it may be, going underground protects you from radiation meteors, and solar flare material.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[cmowire]

Take a welding class sometime. There is much much much more to welding than the standard oxy-acetelyne torch.

Oxygen is not required. There are certain high-strength welding processes that even require a vacuum to work.

They already need to deal with the problem of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen getting into the welds, which is why stick welders have a thick coating of flux on the rods and MIG and TIG welders cover the weldment with a variety of inert or mostly-inert gasses.

There are other problems, of course. :)

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[cmowire]

Ah, but convection doesn't work, so you increase the possibility of any fluxes not properly floating to the top. You also have to wory about the flux evaporating and causing the solder to be propelled away from the workpiece. Also, some soldering and welding processes are designed to work inside the atmosphere, others are designed to work outside of the atmosphere.

But, no, nothing on the ISS is being welded in space. It is sent up in large chunks and is bolted together, often times with motorized screws so that the astronauts just have to manuver the pieces towards each other and then command the berthing mechanism to grip. They have been doing some limited soldering experiments in the ISS, but never as repair work, just as tests for eventually doing repair work.

The biggest problem is that a spacewalk takes too much effort to set up. You have to plan it out. You have to pre-breathe oxygen. You have to replace all of the relevant consumables. The people doing them are scientists, not bridge workers.

You can only get so far with merely bolting stuff together. Eventually, you need to start doing fabrication work. Sure, it's easier to send up 1 ton of easy-to-fab raw materials, but it's even easier to grab a 100 ton iron asteroid and not bother calling back to Earth at all. :) Remember that some of the iron asteroids are basicly steel with sufficent levels of purity that you could slice 'em up with a cutter and use them as building materials with nay but a quick metalurgical assay.

Some things will be much much easier in space. Ovens for example. A nice parabolic reflector to focus the sun's heat on a lump of metal can be made out of aluminised mylar and (titanium) chickenwire. You can use a refractory blowpipe to blow a bubble out of the lump once it's melted. Taking this to a logical extension, I could see large structures being manufactured using something akin to a glassblower's lathe.

But the problem is, on both the how-do-we-repair-things-and-build-new-things-in-sp ace front and the how-much-gravity-do-we-need-to-not-die-young-in-sp ace front, we've done... ehrm... almost nothing since the 60s.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[blincoln]

Backhoes work on Earth largely because Earth's gravity is stronger than the force of the earth-moving arm exerted against the ground. Bulldozers work because Earth's gravity overcomes the forward force of the dozer, giving traction sufficient to move soil.

I am imagining something like porcupine quills, only much bigger. The moon-based construction equipment shoots a couple into the ground when it needs purchase. If the construction were planned well, the equipment could be detached and the quills used again when something else needs to work in that same spot.

For a bulldozer, you could use the quills as mount points for a modified railroad track that was added on to as the bulldozer needed to move further. Unlike a railroad track on Earth, this one would also be anchoring the vehicles that ran on it.

The dust and problems with hydraulics are big concerns, though. I think it will be interesting to see how those are overcome.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[BeerCat]

Are not cosmic rays still cancerous and devilishly difficult to filter out. It seems like that more than anything else would put the brakes on long term space vacationing

Au contraire. Offer cheap 3 month trips for all those coming up to retirement age, and they likely won't live long enough to claim their pension. Will do wonders for the demographic pensions black hole that the western world seems to be looking forward to.

Re:Less challenges on the moon?

[furry_wookie]

>Construction on the Moon isn't as simple as "dig a hole, plop in base, cover".

How about "light fuse on 1MT nuke. run like hell. boom. plop in base. cover.

mars 1 water 0

[Potor]

my my my ... poor grammar. "unlike mars, water does not exist"? what the hell kind of statement is that? does that mean mars exists, but water does not?

Atmosphere?

[colonslashslash]

The moon is closer to Earth, the atmosphere is less harsh

The moon has atmosphere now?

What a truely magnificent age we live in.

Re:Atmosphere?

[Tx]

Well, to be fair, the moon does have an atmosphere, just about, though not much of one, to be sure.

Re:Atmosphere?

[x_codingmonkey_x]

Actually the Moon does have an atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure is 3 × 10^-13 kPa so essentially a very small one. It consists of Helium 25%, Neon 25%, Hydrogen 23%, and Argon 20%. More info on the Moon here

Re:Atmosphere?

[MythoBeast]

If you think about it, it's common sense. What's worse, living alone, or living with someone who steals all your stuff?

An atmosphere on Earth provides us with many benefits. First, it gives us oxygen to breathe (duh). Second it provides us with ambient pressure so our liquids don't boil. Third, it holds water in solution so we don't dry out. Fourth, it protects us from radiation from space. Fifth, it maintains a livable temperature so we don't boil or freeze. This doesn't include a host of useful and non-immediate applications, like carrying voice communication or supporting airplanes, or providing an environment for us to grow food.

The atmosphere of Mars does none of these things (except mild but inadequate radiation protection) so it's little better than a true vaccum. What it does do is leech heat out of anything it touches. It also carries microfine dust which will make it hell to keep anything mechanical working. So, yes, the "atmosphere" of the Moon (or ultrahigh vaccum, or whatever) is, in fact, less harsh than the one on Mars.

Re:Atmosphere?

[ceoyoyo]

Maybe. The atmosphere of Mars also provides a not-insignificant amount of pressure, making it easier to build and less of a catastrophe if you get a leak. Also less of a catastrophe if you happen to puncture your suit. It also provides gasses to use in a greenhouse. The atmosphere might leech heat from things that are uninsulated, but it also regulates heat so you don't have the same extent of baking and freezing that the moon has.

Due to budget constraints...

[brian0918]

NASA is calling for help from the public in designing and building a lunar base entirely out of popsicle sticks and paper clips.

Re:Due to budget constraints...

[SeekerDarksteel]

If only someone had MacGuyver's cell phone number....

Re:Due to budget constraints...

[brian0918]

"If only someone had MacGuyver's cell phone number...."

Ring, Ring

"What do you need?"

"A lunar base to support 50-100 people for 6-8 months."

"What do you got?"

"The cover from an old FORTRAN manual, some rubber tubing, and a chewing gum wrapper...

...hello?"

"Yeah, I'm sending the blueprints overnight FedEx, along with a working model made out of the contents of an ashtray outside the Post Office."

"Thanks!"

"It's what I do." Click.

Space Race

[DarthChris]

"...Is this the start of the next space race?"

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all work together instead of wasting billions on competing?
Of course, that's not gonna happen any time soon.

Re:Space Race

[mcc]

Wouldn't it be nice if we could all work together instead of wasting billions on competing?

Didn't we try that with the International Space Station? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to remember that "all working together" only really worked until such time as the question of who was going to pay for all of this working together came up, at which point the Russians wound up sticking America with the bill for most of the Russian contribution, then started renting stays on the ISS to wealthy millionaires.

Now, the ESA and Japan and whatnot seem to be a lot more responsible about their portions of the project-- hell, maybe more responsible than NASA even-- but maybe we can say there's some downsides to collaboration when we're talking about multi-year public projects that cost many billions of dollars, downsides that don't exist when we're talking about I dunno world diplomacy. The heads of governments and even corporations change from time to time, and when (as with the ISS or a lunar base) the benefits of the project are indirect, every time this happens there is a risk of the new leadership going "wait... why are we paying for this again?". The more countries or entities you have involved, the more chances you wind up with for this risk to come to pass...

Atmosphere less harsh

[NXIL]

Yes, the atmosphere is much less harsh--in fact, in simulations, no one who has taken off their helmet and sampled the moon's simulated atmosphere has ever complained. Ever.

I am certainly glad it is less harsh than the atmosphere of Mars, since I still have that image of Shwarzenegger's eyeballs popping out of his head in "Total Recall" when he is exposed to the pre-terraformed atmosphere.

Perhaps hybrid Man-Beasts will be able to farm water on the Moon. I am looking forward to them filling some craters with farmed water, so I can go sailing there. The trade winds are always nice around the Sea of Stoopidity.

Re:The atmosphere is less harsh?

[aktzin]

Wow, an astonishing piece of news - there's atmosphere on the Moon!

You're right, it's not astonishing. Thanks to the Apollo missions and more recent studies it was determined that our moon and many others in the solar system actually have very faint atmospheres. Though the Moon's gravity is very low it's just enough to hold a thin concentration of gas molecules very close to the surface:

http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/moon/ lunar_atm.html&edu=high

I do see your point, common sense would make it seem that it's just a vacuum. What with all the impact craters and the sky being always black over there.

Not until the moon dust problem is solved.

[leftie]

"...However, Russell Kerschmann never forgot. He is a pathologist at NASA Ames studying the effects of mineral dust on human health. Both the Moon and Mars are extremely dusty worlds, and inhaling their dust could be bad for astronauts, says Kerschmann.

"The real problem is the lungs," he ex-plains. "In some ways, lunar dust resembles the silica dust on Earth that causes silicosis, a serious disease." Formerly known as "stone-grinder's disease," silicosis first came to idespread public attention during the Great Depression when hundreds of miners drilling the Hawk's Nest Tunnel through Gauley Mountain in West Virginia died within five years of breathing the fine quartz dust kicked into the air by dry drilling--even though they had been ex-posed for only a few months. "It was one of the biggest occupational health disasters in U.S. history," Kerschmann says...."

"...Quartz, the main cause of silicosis, is not chemically poisonous. "You could eat it and not get sick," he continues. "But when quartz is freshly ground into dust particles smaller than 10 m (for comparison, a human hair is 50+ m wide) and breathed into the lungs, they can embed themselves deeply into the tiny alveolar sacs and ducts where oxygen and carbon dioxide gases are exchanged." There, the lungs cannot clear out the dust via mucus or coughing. Moreover, the immune system's white blood cells commit suicide when they try to engulf the sharp-edged particles to carry them away in the blood-stream. In the acute form of silicosis, the lungs can fill with proteins from the blood. He adds that it is as if the victim slowly suffocates from a pneumonia-like condition.

Lunar dust, which like quartz is a compound of silicon, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous. But like the quartz dust in the Hawk's Nest Tunnel, it is extremely fine and abrasive, almost like powdered glass. Astronauts on several Apollo missions found that it clung to everything and was almost impossible to remove. Once it was tracked inside the lunar module, some of the dust easily became airborne, irritating lungs and eyes...."

http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_moondust_0602 23.html

Re:Not until the moon dust problem is solved.

[Quixote]

for comparison, a human hair is 50+ m wide

Jeezus! Even KingKong doesn't have that fat hair.

Re:Not until the moon dust problem is solved.

[Pulzar]

...But when quartz is freshly ground into dust particles smaller than 10 m...

I think you don't have to be scientist to realize that eating 10 meter wide chunks of rock is dangerous. ;)

Less harsh ?

[aepervius]

Mars ~ 1/100 of earth atmosphere at sea level and mainly CO2
Moon pressure (none or nearly none)

Less harsh is a kind of misnomer. You would probably have the same kind of problem between a wall separating 1 atm air and 1/100 atm CO2, as with a wall separating 1 atm air and 0, nada...

hell yes

[kiyuki]

Finally a place far enough to go when my ex comes to town.

"News" for Nerds, Stuff that matters.

[iamlucky13]

Fortunately, the article isn't quite so silly, but I'm hard pressed to find a reason why this article should take up space on the front page. It's not news. It's a very vague and somewhat scattered compilation of miscellaneous details that have been discussed over the past couple of years, with a sprinkling cheesy analogies and meaningless opinions on top. This fits better in the category of "Tidbits for people who don't care. Stuff the BBC wrote about last year"

Don't think so...

[Reality Master 101]

The US is planning to build a permanent lunar base which will support future visits to Mars.

Nothing is "permanent" that doesn't pay for itself. I'm sure everyone thought in 1969 that we were permanently on the moon, but it didn't quite work out that way, did it?

It's like Magellan. You send them off, and maybe they come back, maybe they don't,

Magellan et al were looking for PROFIT. They weren't risking their lives for the hell of it.

Re:Space Race, with standards?

[taiwanjohn]

I agree with both you and the parent comment. Competition is healthy, but working together could save a bundle. How about agreeing on a few standards, such as the size and shape of airlocks, so that different countries' vessels could dock with each other? That would allow easier cooperation, while preserving the competitive environment. It would also allow private companies like SpaceX to interoperate with everyone else in the game.

Maybe somebody at NASA will write an RFC...

--jrd

Obligatory Futurama Quote

[bytor4232]

Narrator: No one really knows when, where, or how man landed on the moon...
Fry: I do!
Narrator: ...but our Fungineers imagine it went something like this.
[Animatronic whalers emerge from a lunar lander]
Animatronic whalers: [singing] We're whalers on the moon.
Animatronic gophers: We carry a harpoon.
Animatronic gophers, Animatronic whalers: But there are no whales, so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune.
Fry: That's not how it happened.
Leela: I don't see you with a Fungineering degree.

That's nothin'

[ZoneGray]

Big deal. The Grateful Dead played From The Mars Hotel more than 30 years ago.

MO-tels?

[CarpetShark]

Even more astonishing... there will be motels.

A type of hotel in which parking is provided at or near the room and the room door gives out onto the parking lot.

Low-gravity sex motel!!

[erroneus]

Oh I think I'd love to visit there some time!! Low- and zero-gravity sex has been on my list of things to do for quite some time. Could it be possible in the next 10 years? I hope so!! Guess I better start saving now.