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NASA's New Mission to the Moon
mattnyc99 writes "Popular Mechanics has a new, in-depth preview of NASA's Orion spacecraft, tracking the complex challenges facing the engineers of the CEV (which NASA chief Michael Griffin called 'Apollo on steroids') as America shifts its focus away from the Space Shuttle and back toward returning to the moon by 2020. After yesterday's long op-ed in the New York Times concerning NASA's about-face, Popular Mechanic's interview with Buzz Aldrin and podcast with Transterrestrial.com's Rand Simberg raise perhaps the most pressing questions here: Is it worth going back to the lunar surface? And will we actually stay there?"
Will we go back to stay? not if it's for science only, IMHO it will take private companies to make space travel, including exploting the moon for it's resources, to make this 'permanent'. NASA has no where in it's mandate to do anything except research.
If we went back to the moon, I assume NASA's plan to would be to discover water so eventually the moon could be a docking station for trips to mars!
Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?
What do you mean "going back"? That assumes we were there a first time.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
The initial estimates are that this time around the mission is going to be far less expensive. One NASA official, who wished to remain anonymous, said, "CGI has really matured to a point where shooting a return to the moon is now viable. Instead of a sandy soundstage we'll simply have our guys in front of a greenscreen. In fact, some of the more optimistic estimates posit that by 2020 we won't even need live bodies in the studio."
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
who cares about the MOON!
The boston police?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
What for? Surely this is just another presidential exercise in sticking it to the Commies?
True, but there are other benefits. Learning how to colonize space would be a biggie in my book. Besides, if we can't go to the moon, we don't stand a chance at going to Mars, Europa, Titan, or possibly beyond our solar system. The moon is the first step.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Lol. Many, many reasons.
Yes, there's the lifeboat argument.
There's doing research and rehearsals for manned exploration further out. I certainly wouldn't want to venture to Mars or the asteroids without technology tested a little closer to home first.
Raw materials -- He3 (as fusion fuel) is one possibility. As a source for raw materials (silicon, aluminum, etc) for building solar powersats is another.
Astronomical research -- lunar farside is the best place in the solar system for radio telescopes, it's shielded from Earth's noise. It's also a pretty good place for telescopes at all other wavelengths, especially if there's a manned base to swap out instruments, repair cameras, etc.
A frontier. People need one, even if only a few actually pioneer it. Earth will go crazy even faster without one.
Whole books have been written on "why", a Slashdot comment isn't going to do it justice.
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As the folks at Goddard expained it during the Moon Math student competition, "When you go camping, isn't it a good idea to try setting up the campsite in your backyard first, 600 inches away, so you can try out everything, or run back in the house if you forgot your flashlight, make sure you remember to bring everything, and *THEN* go camping for real to somewhere 600 miles away?"
That's a largely non-obvious reason for using the same basic vehicle for both mission sets.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Funny how after 30 years of listening to people say "when will we go back and who will that be?" now people are saying "Is it worth going back to the lunar surface?" How did this reversal of thinking happen?
We have a lot more information than the last 3 moon attempts. Time was the only answer you could know about right and wrong was what you could think of on your own based on what you saw in the sky and how much spare cash you had.
Now the answers for everything are downloadable. You don't need to come up with your own answers because the internet has the answers for you. The change in where our information comes from has changed our opinions.
"I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and leaving him safely there."
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
I wonder if a roll of duct tape might be prudent as well.
Absolutely. Duct tape was essential to saving Apollo 13, when they had to rig an adapter for the square CM lithium hydroxide canisters to the circular LM canister ports. (CM and LM were built by different contractors, each with their own design for lithium hydroxide (part of the CO2 scrubbing system) canisters.)
Also comes in handy for keeping stuff from drifting around if there's no Velcro handy. Standard equipment on every Shuttle mission.
-- Alastair
...though, methinks that this whole "return to the moon" wouldn't even have been brought up had the Chinese not boasted about what they hope to accomplish.
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I agree completely with Prof. Hawking--We need to establish life outside of Earth.
Deep space scientific observation is nice, but until we have a self-sustaining colony off of earth, manned space technology should be our #1 priority.
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FTFA
it's hard to see the pitfalls so far ahead, but I worry that once we establish a base on the moon, we might get bogged down there.
I thought for the moment there, is he was talking back some foolhardy contemporary military adventure.
I wonder what he meant by this, how could we get "bogged" down on the moon?
Aside: Anybody know what the ROM price tag for an established moon based is compared to say the price tag for the Iraqi war?
There's an interesting article on what the space program could've look like if the Saturn V rocket program wasn't cancelled. The new program will be just a shadow in comparison.
Can somebody better acquainted with the mechanics of sending a vehicle to the Moon and back please explain why Buzz Aldrin recommends taking a sextant? Or does the tried and tested technology to be used this time involve lashing the Captain to the aerial to take the latitude while the crew pile on the solar sails?
Pining for the fjords
They also had a couple of failures - and the failures/sucesses were dotted pretty evenly across the attempts. Zond was a percursor to a Soviet attempt to perform an Apollo 8 flyby to steal NASA's thunder - in fact, it was the Zond tests that lead to Apollo 8 being a lunar mission rather than a high earth orbit mission so as to steal the Russians thunder!
Before the budget cuts of 65/66 and the Fire, NASA planned on as many as *6* manned flights in LEO and an indeterminate number of lunar flights before committing to a landing attempt. Those budget cuts, the time lost after the fire, and the growing realization that the Soviets might be able to trump them forced their hand.
So much for the myth of Apollo-era NASA being the brave and bold agency they are so often portrayed as of late. Until forced, they were just as conservative as they are today.
Would it be worthwhile to launch space missions from a lunar base? It would seem to me that because of the lower gravity you would need less power to reach escape velocity - or am I incorrect in this? That could be one potential bonus of going back to the moon.
so give it to people who are willing to work for it rather than some crappy rat hole like welfare. I'd much rather support engineers than drug addicts. With the best answer to me being "Don't fucking take my money in the first place!!!"
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
The Moon is like Iceland - easier to get to from Europe but there's not much there besides scenery. The Mars system (Mars, Phobos, Deimos) are New York City, Boston and Philadelphia. I guess this makes Mars-Earth L1 the Hudson River?
The resources to build an entire civilization exist on/around Mars. The moon is a fossil world.
We can learn some from Luna, and probably take the first steps to colonization there, but the real action is going to be on Mars. There is a lot of planet-specific engineering that needs to be done for either location. Lunar spacesuits won't work on Mars, there will be huge differences in sealing technology and energy generation (you can burn silane as internal combustion on Mars, for instance). We can learn as much in high orbit or at a NEO about colonizing Mars as we can on the Moon. Almost all technical development for any near-term colonization is going to be developed on Earth, though.
If I had several Billion $$ right now, I'd commision a Russian-Bigelow spacecraft for a human mission to Phobos or Deimos. This is the ideal target for early development, energetically close to Earth, resource rich and within telepresence range of Mars. We can mine water and ship it back to LEO using technology we have now, or nearly. Russian companies have decades worth of human habitat experience, Bigelow would provide the main living space, custom tools purchased from best providers. The project would mine water and provide realtime control for robots throughout cis-Mars.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I made this for Mars, but I think it still answers the question.
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building a colony at a Lagrangian point makes a lot more sense than going to the moon especially as a way station to Mars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point
This could be considered slightly offtopic, but I would add one more benefit of NASA Moon mission: the resurrection of public interest in space science (in general) and Space Science Fiction (in particular). Did you notice that during recent decades the theme of science fiction shifted significantly from space exploration plots to fantasy and alternative history? As a big fan of space science fiction, I feel my favourite trend is neglected. The reason is obvious - the whole space research both in USA and Russia/Europe fell into stagnation and public interest was lost. Remember how excited the science fiction writers were about space technology back in 60s? They were expecting humans to fly around solar system by 2000 and to distant stars in the beginning of this new century. Where are their hopes? Ruined. Now I really hope NASA mission will bring back the long-forgotten public excitement about space exploration, and the science fiction will once again picture the starships instead of dragons and elves. I hope.
The moon is the first step.
Why? Colonizing the moon is a drastically different undertaking from colonizing Mars. The moon is essentially a vacuum. It's cold. It has no useful resources to speak of (and no, He3 won't be useful any time soon). 1/6th Earth's gravity. And it's fairly close.
Meanwhile, Mars has water. And abundance of minerals. A thin atmosphere containing useful gases. A surface temperature that actually breaks the freezing point occasionally. Double the gravity of the moon. And it's so far away that getting there has proved to be a surprisingly difficult undertaking.
Honestly, the idea that colonization of the Moon will tell use anything useful about colonizing Mars is, frankly, silly. The methods that would be used for the two projects are *completely* different. Meanwhile, we can't even build a self-contained biosphere on *Earth*! Maybe we should try tackling that drastically simpler task before we start planning Moon bases.
In that case, I hope the Chinese boast more often about big, hairy, audacious space goals.
I would say that NASA's mandate, as a government agency, is whatever the people democratically choose for it to do. More tangibly, the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which founded NASA, declares:
Plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities is rather open to interpretation, but exploration has always been considered an element of this. Actually, this does not counter your research point, because research involves both exploration and the development of necessary infrastructure (such as a moon base) to support it. I could detail some of the 100+ research proposals NASA has for the moon, but I'll leave it for another post
Number 3 and 4 are very relevant to your post, and also very clearly supported in the Exploration Systems Architecture Study, which guides much of the current development work. NASA is very open to cooperating with other friendly nations and private industry to use the systems they're developing to land additional payloads on the moon.
As far as how a permanent stay would pan out, since the article doesn't detail it, the Constellation program would conduct a handfull of missions up to two weeks in length to points of interest. One of these will likely be an already identified crater rim near one of the poles that receives almost constant sunlight. The constant sunlight simplifies many things.
NASA would then conduct several follow up missions to the same site, each one bringing more equipment. The proposed design for the lander makes the return stage as small as possible, which maximizes the amount of hardware left behind. Being modular, the lander could also fly missions to land several tons of cargo without a crew, such as prefabricated laboratories.
After 4 or 5 missions to the same location, there would be sufficient resources on the surface to support a permanent crew. From there NASA could conduct research that may really jumpstart commerical development, such as in situ resource utilization and low gravity excavation and health effects.
Even under the most dire/optimistic scenarios a lunar facility isn't gonna be much of a viable 'lifeboat' for generations yet. Indeed if things go seriously awry it's probably the most untenable place to be for any calamity except a fast-acting/highly-virulent/fatal terrestrial biohazard, and then you'd likely just get to live somewhat longer and die a premature death of a different cause. After a terrestrial catastrophe a lunar facility likely won't contribute much to future generations but an interesting monument. Rather a planet of 6 billion with a huge biosphere has so much more in the way of odd nooks & corners for refugees & resources.
Except a lunar facility is going to be markedly different then anything space-based. Significant gravity, a surface, 2 week bright/dark cycles, huge dust & debris issues; except for lack of atmosphere they're almost entirely different problem sets. A space station is certainly the better R&D environment for spacefaring development. As to Martian R&D Earth as good, and substantially cheaper/more-amenable venue then the moon offers.
Except that asteroids are probably a far better materials supply source and can be got roboticly, with their materials easier separated, refined, and then sent on to Earth in space then from the moon. Furthermore while He3 is promising we've yet to achieve fusion that could take advantage of it and those power sats would probably do as good a job with less complexity then a lunar-fueled terrestrial fusion system anyhow.
Except any manned base is going to be fouling up the local environment and require far more support then just installing spares & alternatives for everything. Again, the moon is good, space is likely better.
Because the moon is the only possible frontier? Not our oceans, deserts, mountain ranges, arctic & antarctic regions? Not more abstract frontiers like science, technology, sociology, psychology, diplomacy, etc.?
I'm honestly not trying to be contrarian but your reasons strike me more as rationalizations. Nearly all could be done better/cheaper using unmanned systems or directly in space. I'd hate to see a lunar base become another dead end like our hopelesly compromised space station, doing expensive science of minimal import or quality.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The idea of landing a man on the moon was initial conceived in 1960. Kennedy made his famous speech in 1961. By 1969, NASA had launched and recovered Apollo 11.
Flash forward to 2007. Presumably, we know how to get to the moon, since we've done it before. Computing and aerospace technology have both advanced considerably in the intervening 46 years. But now, instead of getting there in less than 10 years, they want to take 13?
Something is seriously wrong with this situation.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
We don't have viable breakeven fusion. We're not likely to get it anytime soon. Maybe in 20 years - same as they said 20 years ago, and 20 years before that. It's not as though He-3 or lack thereof is what's stopping us from having breakeven fusion reactors. Using a mythical fuel for a mythical fusion reactor as a reason to go to the moon makes your argument sound, well, mythical. Spending trillions of dollars to stockpile the mythical fuel for the mythical day in the future that it might be needed is crazy. If it's there, it'll still be there when (if) it's needed. Do we even know that it's there? Can you point me to peer-reviewed research?
And the lunar surface is, for many reasons, a much worse place than space for telescopes of all sorts. Huge temperature extremes, not the most stable environment, lack of pointing control, you lose 50% of your observing time because your telescope is looking sunward and you have to have RPGs because the other 50% of the time you lose your solar power. We don't use a lot of RPGs, they're a pain in the butt. Heavy, expensive, launch issues, radiation issues, reliability issues and it's difficult to get as much power as you get from a solar panel. Solar power is easier and more reliable. I've worked on a couple of projects where, just for fun and to forestall objections we weren't being forward-thinking enough, we ran trades of a moon site. Space won. Putting stuff on the moon isn't any less expensive than putting it at L2 and L2 is better for a lot of other reasons.
Couple of IFs:
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Well, let's see. 1/6th gravity might be nice for some things. It does equate to 1/6th the difficulty in managing heavy objects. Vacuum is, amazingly enough, common for many likely working environments in space. We need practice; better to do it around a developed moonbase with medical facilities, manufacturing and so on than around some asteroid that has a lot of something we want, plus vacuum. It's not necessarily "cold", by the way, it is in vacuum, which is something else entirely. There is plenty of energy falling on its surface from which heat can be gathered. And power. In any case, it isn't like you're going to lie on the surface naked. Another thing is it is closer than anything else, and once we have a base there, going other places is a lot less costly -- launching from a 1/6th gravity well is much less costly than launching from a 1G gravity well. Not just into space in general, but to Mars, to Earth orbit, moon orbit, everywhere. There have been many suggestions about how to mine the moon's resources and get worthwhile products from them. Once there and we get a little practice, I have little doubt there would be more of the same. If materials can be obtained to build spacecraft, for instance, then we're WAY better off with a moonbase. It's a great place for telescopes, too. And RF research. And vacations (I'd love to have a 1/6th G environment to practice martial arts in, or to have sex in, or even to just turn backflips in.) As for creating a self-contained biosphere, you know what they say about necessity being the mother of invention.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It'd get bigger! Result!
Do some research first. The moon is out of the way of mars. it would take more fuel to travel to the moon then from the moon to mars as opposed to to making a straight shot to mars. There have been plenty of articles debunking this.
How about spending the money learning about earth and settling the Climate change debate rather than wasting trillions of dollars over a pipe dream.
Plenty of folks with a decent background say that there is much to be gained by making the moon an intermediate step.
And there are plenty who don't. For example, this fellow feels that "Currently, this author believes that there are few, if any, efficient reasons to use the Moon as a stepping stone for going to Mars", since "Mars is a planet with an atmosphere and resources that preclude the Moon from acting as a relevant analogue, and our current space program is quite adept at operating spacecraft in the vacuum of space for timespans that double the most modest estimate of the one-way transit time to Mars."
Perhaps you have some material which counters these points in some meaningful way, rather than simply appealing to authority?
Secondly, you're a Canadian, so I do not see why it concerns you.
Because, like it or not, the United States is our best hope for getting humanity into space. So I'd rather they didn't waste 20 years putting a man back on the moon when it is, IMHO, and the opinion of many others, a waste of time, energy, and resources.
I don't know where you got your information, but the moon has - at some point in it's orbit - the same relative velocity as the earth with regard to mars. This is unavoidable, as the moon orbits the earth, if you'll recall. Launching at the appropriate time will ensure no loss with regard to the moon's orbit. However, with 1/6th the gravity well, the same amount of energy will result in a higher velocity, or less energy the same, with regard to a trip to mars from there as compared to the earth. It's just math. And of course, there is no air resistance, no weather, and little air traffic to contend with.
How about not making the terrifically dim assumption that we can only do one of those at a time? Do you fall over when you chew gum? Sheesh.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I don't know where you got your information, but the moon has - at some point in it's orbit - the same relative velocity as the earth with regard to mars. This is unavoidable, as the moon orbits the earth, if you'll recall. Launching at the appropriate time will ensure no loss with regard to the moon's orbit. However, with 1/6th the gravity well, the same amount of energy will result in a higher velocity, or less energy the same, with regard to a trip to mars from there as compared to the earth. It's just math. And of course, there is no air resistance, no weather, and little air traffic to contend with.
Okay, perhaps I'm missing something, but in order to launch from the Moon to Mars, you need to get fuel to the Moon first. You can't make fuel on the Moon, after all. There's nothing to make it from. So you have to lift it out of Earth's gravity well. So, let's say you do that. So you burn a bunch of fuel to get a bunch more fuel out of Earth's gravity well and deposit it on the moon. Then, you launch from the Moon, burning yet more fuel to climb out of the Moon's gravity well, and a bunch more to make the shot to Mars.
So, tell me... where is the savings, here?
That's the beauty of doing the Moon first. A colony on the Moon is harder than on Mars in most respects. Due to the lack of an atmosphere the sand on the Moon is some of the most abrasive stuff you'll be able to find and the lack of gravity has massive implications for astronaut health and will make many tasks very tedious.
OTOH, *if* something goes really wrong, you won't have to wait for a launch window, you won't give up years and years of work and you won't need a year to get back to Earth.
Someone gets cancer? Back to Earth! No need to wait for spring. Your water supply went the way of the Dodo? Back to Earth! ...
The Moon makes such an excellent training exercise because like in just about any other exercise that's worth its money the problems you face are harder than the real thing while the risks are considerably lower. It also allows us to perfect much of the everyday equipment so it can resist the daily wear and tear and break gracefully while we wait for a better solution to get a spacecraft from here to Mars in a reasonable timeframe.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'd mod you up, but I can't, so instead I'll just argue the opposite.
Let's assume that all the money in the OECD spent by space agencies gets pumped into working on the aid shortfall, assuming the 0.7% GDP goal is the proper goal. That's about a $24 billion drop in a $50 billion bucket. The rest could be made up by a goodly chunk of Microsoft profit money, leaving them $10 billion. However, this is only assuming that the 0.7% is the only goal. There's also the problems of health care (that leftover $10 billion could give the 45 million uninsured Americans about $218 per year). Afterwards comes education, housing, and the impoverished in the OECD that would be overlooked by our 0.7%.
So the $24 billion would be a step in the right direction, but you forget what we buy with that money: a look over the next hill. The Chinese explored for a bit, arriving as far afield as East Africa and beginning colonies around their area of the world. They nearly dominated the East. After 30 years of this, they turned inwards and burned their fleets trying to achieved Confucian inner perfection. That insular behavior undid the progess achieved under their age of exploration. The Chinese never achieved the perfection they sought. In contrast, Europe achieved the wealth and power it sought, whether for good or ill, and now it and its transplant nations (the rest of the OECD) are the most prosperous in the world.
The $24 billion we spend wouldn't eliminate poverty if spent on poverty, but it may if it's spent on reaching upward and outward.
What's this? Another weblog? On transit?
And this is where the resources on the moon come in handy. If you could actually mine the needed metals and maybe even fuel (He3 as fuel is a long way off but not impossible) on the moon, build the craft on the moon, and *then* launch to mars, you'd be far better off then anything built on earth as far as launch costs go.
I personally doubt that will be viable for a while, but thinking long term moon launches will certainly be a "reason."
All the same, I'm personally of the opinion that mars would make better practice for the moon then the other way around. The actual exercise of getting to the moon, landing, and returning is about all that would be useful that we couldn't do in earth orbit (or in the case of biosphere *on* the earth) easier. Also mars is far more useful in and of itself (instead of just practice for something else) then the moon is in the near future. Add to that it isn't really more technically difficult to get to mars, besides transit time, and I think it would make a better first target.
So why the moon first? Because we're afraid that if we don't someone else will, and before we can get to mars (because lets face it that'll add a few years of checking calculations). That and going to the moon will probably take less money in new research, and if something goes wrong we at least have a chance of fixing it (see apollo 13... much harder to do with a 14 minute delay). Once we gain confidence (and public support with the great new images for the conspiracy theorists to compare to the originals... because lets face it one of the things to do on the moon is to reproduce the original photos with old cameras to explain why some things happen) people won't think mars is too much. And I'm willing to wait 15 years to go to mars if it means we'll do it right.
Does a line appended to your comment give your post meaning in and of itself, or only in relation to those without?
Most of Africa would kill to get what the poor in the US have.
The only people starving in the US are nuts (anorexics, bulimics, crazy street people that won't take help).
We spend millions per year on free health care for fat 'poor' people. There are no fat poor people (truly poor).
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seeing how far I can spit in low grav.
Probably about as far as the inside surface of your space helmet. Ewww.
-- Alastair
Either that's very subtle sarcasm you've got there... or you and others reading this aren't keeping track of 3 facts:
1. The moon is about 384,500 km from Earth.
2. Mars is about 55,000,000 km from Earth - at its closest.
3. Most importantly, the moon goes around the Earth all the time.
So... there are times where the moon is 384,500 km closer to Mars than the Earth is.
And there are times where the moon is 384,500 km further than Mars is.
And at best, that's six thousandths of the total straight-line distance to Mars.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You are, of course, correct in that little distance is gained if the moon was to be used as a waystation to Mars. I had read the gp to mean that the moon is closer environmentally to Mars. It is a better place to R&D the technologies we would want to take with us to Mars. Whatever habitat module, vehicle, and local resource extraction NASA comes up with for Mars, should be tested on the moon first.
We are all just people.
One time, yes you do. But you also need to do that for a shot straight from earth. So that's pretty much a wash, agreed? The problem comes from multiple moon ->mars shots.
Certainly you can, and yes there is. Think about the basics. What is a space drive, generally speaking? It is a device that expels [something] in the opposite direction from that which you desire to go. And how do we get some of the highest exhaust velocities we've ever attained? Ion drives. Electricity. Ion drives expel stuff [any stuff that will hold a charge] using electricity. And is there electricity on the moon? Think solar panels, and the answer, of course, is yes. Right now, Ion drives are limited in thrust, but they are *very* efficient. That's one useful approach, and there's nothing to say we won't improve them hugely. They're really excellent space drives because they can keep adding thrust on a continuous basis; they use less reaction mass because they can attain such a high exhaust velocity. They're low, constant thrust.
But wait... How do you get anything off the surface with a low thrust engine? You need more power than an ion drive, right? Yep. Can you do it electrically? Sure. You can use a linear accelerator. Again, purely electrical technology, and you can fling things at astounding velocities. The longer the accelerator, the more human-freindly the acceleration will be. Short tracks require high G's, and we hate that. Anyway, again, it's down to electricity and nothing else. No need to lift anything out of the earth's gravity well, once the system is running. We're doing better and better at capacitive storage, and batteries will soon fall to ultracaps, or at least, that's how it looks today. Solar panels are getting less and less expensive, and more and more efficient, and silicon... is there silicon on the moon? Yep. There is. :-)
And landing? Next, there are space elevators. We've got some really tough technical issues trying to build a space elevator on earth. The materials strength to gravity well challenge is just about at the edge of what is possible. But on the moon, this isn't at all the case. 1/6th the gravity means, pretty much anyway, 1/6th the problem. You can bring all manner of cargo up and down at absolute minimum cost and a reasonable constant energy expenditure. After all, space vessels should probably remain in space; it isn't them we want to get from here to there, it is the cargo. Space elevators are also much happier when there is no atmosphere; they just sit there. No blowing around, etc. On Mars, while the gravity is in your favor there, the atmosphere might be a little annoying. Still, it's more doable than it is here on earth.
It's like anything else. You have to spend to build the infrastructure required to get things running on their own, but once that's done, then the returns defray, and eventually eliminate, the original investment. But it doesn't have to be an infinite loop of bringing things from earth to the moon. There are plenty of creative solutions to these problems - I'm not saying they aren't problems - and in the end, there is every reason to think we can pull this off and make it work, and work well.
There are enormous amounts of natural resources out there. We should go get them. We should land and establish bases everywhere we can. We should explore, because knowledge rarely proves useless, and because a lot of us like to explore. The more resources we pull from space, the fewer we'll need to pull from the earth. Delivery of raw materials from space is pretty trivial, basically let gravity do it; the main thing, I would think, is to make them come in gently enough so as not to cook the atmosphere in the process, and avoid scattering them on impact. Water landings and gliding bodies come to mind. But that's not my area of expertise. :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, maybe not fuel, but you can make all the oxidizer you could ever need, and that's the more important half.
72% by weight of a typical Kerosene/LOX rocket engine is oxygen. And the soil/dust/regolith on the Moon is mostly oxygen. We just need to perfect automated methods of extracting the oxygen from the soil, but that's an engineering problem, and not a showstopper.
Not exactly. You burn some fuel to bring a small amount fuel from Earth to the Moon, and don't bother to bring oxidizer. Then you combine the fuel you brought with LOX you harvested from the surface of the Moon, and launch to Mars with that. Since you're only leaving a 1/6g gravity well, you will need far less fuel to leave the moon and go to Mars than you would to leave Earth and go to Mars, assuming you left during the launch window when the Moon has a higher orbital velocity with respect to Mars than the Earth does (which happens about once a month). All this adds up to an energy savings.
Of course, this all requires some sort of infrastructure to work, like a moonbase, and that will be expensive to build. But once the infrastructure is in place, the long-term energy savings are substantial, especially if we start doing things like harvesting objects outside the Earth's gravity well for the other half of the fuel/oxidizer ratio. There's water in comets--that's a hydrogen source. Most asteroids have the same composition as Carbonaceous chontrite meteorites, which are chock full of organic compounds--these can be cracked open to collect both hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen can be burned by itself or combined with oxygen to make hydrogen peroxide (a low-energy monopropellant used in some thrusters). Nitrogen can be combined with oxygen to form dinitrogen tetroxide (a decent rocket fuel that requires an oxidizer) or with hydrogen to form hydrazine (a high-energy monopropellant). I'm sure people with more experience in chemistry and astronomy can suggest many other possibilities as well.
The bottom line is, there's lots of fuel available out in the solar system, outside the big gravity wells, and taking advantage of launching from a small gravity well using fuel harvested from other small gravity wells will result in a substantial energy savings.
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Pfff! The moon is just big chunk of iron, titanium, oxygen, and magnesium. Nothing that could *EVER* be mined in the future at a huge profit or anything.....
Ya know, this is a giant mineral deposit that that is 3,474.206 km in diameter. Not only that, but you don't ene need to really 'dig' to get at the stuff - scoop it up, and load it into a furnace.
If they push hard at a serious colonization of the moon, there is a *lot* of money to be made.
But wait... there is probably gonna be some group of "Moon Huggers" who will want to declare the moon some kind of "preserve" or something..... definitely nothing useful for humanity.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....