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European Scientists Make a Case For a Return To the Moon

Posted by timothy on from the earth's-attic dept.

MarkWhittington writes "While the official target of NASA's space exploration program remains exploring Earth approaching asteroids, the case for a return to the moon has been made from a variety of quarters. The most recent attempt to make a case for the moon is in a paper, titled Back to the Moon: The Scientific Rationale for Resuming Lunar Surface Exploration, soon to be published in the journal Planetary and Space Science."

29 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. We're still /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Please link to the actual journal submission, not some article from the Yahoo! Contributor Network...

    1. Re:We're still /. by timothy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah -- sorry about that, now fixed. I'd deleted it (the Yahoo version was wrapped in a spammy wrapper), inadvertently not put in the clean version until just now.

      timothy

      --
      jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
    2. Re:We're still /. by damm0 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, it's been a long time since I got a goats.cx link, and my life is better for it!

  2. Well, then that settles it. by Lord+Kano · · Score: 5, Funny

    Since "European" scientists are in board, maybe the Obama administration will agree to it.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
    1. Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Borrowing money isn't fraud, and raising taxes isn't fraud. Nor is taxation theft. Taxation is agreeing that some things are best for the state to manage and paying for those from everyone.

      You need to focus more on jobs, which will create wealth. Cutting spending is creating a spiral of destruction in its wake that is destroying wealth left right and centre. Without jobs there's no demand, without demand there's no production and no innovation, without which there's less demand, and less wealth.

    2. Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yep, that is exactly it. Seriously. This isn't 1850. We understand a great deal more about economies than we used to, and *now* is definitely the time for massive government spending. Otherwise we'll keep wallowing around waiting for someone to try massive government spending to kick up demand. And I don't know about you but waiting for the chinese to spend their pile of 2 trillion dollars, and hoping they spend it on stuff we make, at some unknown abstract point in the future doesn't seem like a good economic plan.

      It's not actually a fallacy. For an example, see Japan, because of the Tsunami their economy grew year on year about 4.7% (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/japan-raises-january-march-economic-growth-estimate-to-12-percent-amid-disaster-recovery/2012/06/07/gJQAQASYMV_story.html) Spending is spending. Considering the tsunami cost them about 2.3% of GDP, and they've seen 2.9 percent net growth mostly from reconstruction they are net ahead, and reconstruction isn't over yet. The new windows are better than the old ones so to speak. Education, health care, roads etc. have no more commercial value than that which we place on them. Space exploration is absolutely no different. EADS was largely organized and funded by government because as a commercial enterprise all of the precursor companies were wholly uncompetitive. That *investment*, which was made on the backs of taxpayers, notably rich ones, kept 100 000 direct jobs in europe, + all the spinoff jobs that would have otherwise gone to the US and boeing etc. Investing in space exploration now is probably not the most efficient stimulus plan available to europe, but it wouldn't be all that big of a stimulus plan anyway. 100 billion euros a year is probably less than a 10th of the spending they need.

      Most of europe isn't drowning in debt. Quite the contrary, the only country drowning in debt is really greece, with italy a distant and not particularly serious second. Greece's debt problem is compounded because as they make cuts to government spending they're driving down the ability of those workers to spend, which is reducing private sector demand, contracting the economy, making their debt proportionally larger. They're fucked because the thing to do in this situation is either be Florida, and have a large portion of your spending be buffeted by the 'federal' (european) government, think medicare, social security etc, which wouldn't devalue just because one local area is having a bad time, or to devalue their currency to encourage a growth in exports. Europe won't go along with a federal union, and they can't devalue their currency... so they're boned. They are effectively trapped on a gold standard.

      When you're drowning in debt you need to either shrink the value of that debt relative to your foreign holdings (devalue your currency), or grow your economy, or both, since one will naturally lead to the other. Since every country in the world cannot devalue against each other, and we've all devalued quite a bit against china there's not much to be done there.

      When times are good and the economy is booming, that's when the government needs to lay people off. Right now, paying them to scratch their butts (lets call it unemployment) would be better than what they're currently doing. When the economy needs jobs you need to start laying them off from the public sector. When the private sector won't hire the public sector needs to, or else you start contracting the economy in a spiral.

      To use another example of the broken window not actually a fallacy is how WW2 spending pulled economies out of recession. The new deal and so on in the US were essentially the same thing, a start if you will. Building a huge amount of stuff that was of no commercial value created jobs for the better part of 7 or 8 years (depending on where exactly you where), and that boom continued on well after because you had a demobilizing of public sector workers (soldiers) into the private sector as the economy grew.

      Part

    3. Re:Well, then that settles it. by Sir_Sri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Taxation is not theft. At least not when democratic governments do it. Taxation is the people voting to use their collective bargaining power to buy services.

      So it's alright when enough people say its ok? So if a gang of X (X being the number of people when it is ok for the theft to be morally justified) corner you at gunpoint and let you vote with them if they should rob them. Democracy is 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what they want for dinner.

      yep. And if you don't like it, go somewhere that lets you choose whether or not you're going to pay taxes at all. Like greece. Or pakistan. Seriously. Pay off the right people and your tax bill will magically disappear.

      What sky high tax rates are you talking about? You can't on one hand claim sky high tax rates are murderous and then claim france and germany are strong economies (who are not as highly taxed as the nordic countries, most of whom are doing even better) and then say spain italy (and presumably) greece aren't. there's no strong correlation there. France and germany are both taxed, and spend, more than spain, with italy less than france but more than germany, and greece is way down the list.

      I don't mean to correlate the tax rates between the various European countries and their relative prosperity, merely that Europe has higher tax rates than, say, most of Asia, the Caribbean, most of the Americas, etc. Germany and France have thrived mostly because of their previously solid foundation before the adoption of the Euro.

      yes actually, you did. France and Germany had solid foundations before the euro in part because they had large tax bases.

      The US spends significantly less as a percentage of GDP on total government spending (and taxation) than anyone else and has a massive deficit which it's paying next to nothing in interest on. It also has higher unemployment than Canada or Germany (by quite a lot) despite a significantly lower tax burden, but lower unemployment than france.

      Really? Because when you look at it, the US is quite high. Not as high as Europe of course but a lot higher than the places where people are looking to invest their money in such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Chile, etc. When you look at the US tax burden you also have to look at the fact that the US taxes worldwide income if you are a US citizen which most other countries do not.

      Yes, really, it's not high at all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_of_GDP France is at 44%, germany at 40, canada at 32, the US at 27. That's total government (so the sub national states/provinces/local governments). The US taxation on all overseas persons is inconsequentially small, as it taxes income only over 90.

      Chile, Singapore and Hong Kong have much lower costs than the US, or are much closer to useful markets. The vast majority of countries with any money are higher than the US. The only notable exception is Taiwan, which collects US handouts. Chile I will point out has about 1/4 the per capita income that the US does (1/4 the per capita costs). And HK and Singapore are both cities, so don't really hold up under comparison to a full country. If you count HK as part of China (which it is) china is at 17%, and you know why everyone is moving there, and Singapore would I guess count as part of malaysia but doesn't really.

      A situation where the government borrows a crap-ton of money on useless stuff? A situation where the voters expect the nanny-welfare state to take care of them all their life? Etc. The things that led Greece to this crisis isn't because they have a currency they can't control, instead they can't get out of the crisis the easy way by hyperinflating their currency (something Greece has enjoyed doing since ancient times!) and instead actually have to cut spending and get their affairs in ord

    4. Re:Well, then that settles it. by virg_mattes · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Oh, here we go again with this canard. The breakdown that always seems to escape those who claim that taxation is theft is that firstly, taxes exist because the taxed population chose to create the tax load, and second, paying for what you use and only what you use is an absurdly inefficient way to run a society. Sure, you think it's fair to pay for the roads you use. But pay with what? Did you pay for the infrastructure necessary to create and secure the money you're using to buy your groceries, or do you have to work out a barter or deal with a bunch of incompatible currencies? We did that back in colonial times, and tossed it aside in favor of a central treasury because it's nightmarishly inefficient. The Interstate Highway system came into being because the "pay for what you use" concept simply didn't get the job done. There are a thousand examples of how this works, and the simple fact that virtually every society on Earth uses taxation should clue you in that it's probably not nearly as bad an idea as you'd love to believe.

      I can't walk into Wal-Mart, pick up whatever and walk out can I?

      No, but you can get to the parking lot and you can enter the store without fear that it'll collapse on you and you can buy stuff with a reasonable assumption that you'll get what you're paying for and you can trust that they won't just beat you up and take the money you brought and so on and so on, all because society decided that individuals having to secure all of that personally makes for a crapsack world. If you think you can do better, there are places you can go such that you pay only for what you personally use, but they're far away from most other people and you'll find that you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy just surviving.

      The current method of taxation steals from those who provide the most to society in order to pay for those who either produce nothing or produce less.

      It is to laugh. Do you really think that those with the most income are necessarily the ones who contribute the most to society? If so, you're unrecoverably naive. If you think that money is the measure of value, then I'll thank you to tell me what Paris Hilton has done to earn the vast millions of dollars she has access to. If she hadn't been born into it, she'd be a waitress somewhere in middle America and we both know it. Society is full of people who create value in excess of their paycheck and people who drag in tons of money without contributing much at all, so the whole "steals from the rich" argument falls apart in that regard.

      Theft is compulsory, so is taxation.

      Taxation isn't compulsory. This isn't the Soviet Union. Taxes are just a requirement for being a U.S. citizen, so if you don't want to pay taxes to the U.S. government, then leave the country and renounce your citizenship, and nobody will stop you. However, if you want the benefit of being a U.S. citizen, then you have to pay taxes. As I said above, there are many places in the world where paying taxes isn't required, and you could avail yourself of any number of those places if you don't like taxation. Just don't sit here with your safe drinking water and your anti-fraud legislation and your right to ask for aid if random chance turns you into one of those "less productive" people and whine about having to pay for it. Walk the walk, and all that.

      Virg

  3. Research and Development by KermodeBear · · Score: 4, Interesting

    To me, there's incentive enough to return to the moon simply because of the research and development that would occur. The space program that sent us to the moon the first time brought forth incredible advances in all kinds of areas. We should keep pushing our own boundaries and explore the unknown not simply because it's there, but because we have the opportunity to develop stronger / more efficient / less expensive / generally better tools at the same time. Make the results of the new research available to the public at large and everyone benefits.

    It's a use of my tax dollars that I can support without reservation.

    --
    Love sees no species.
    1. Re:Research and Development by NalosLayor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      We haven't "Lost the ability" -- we simply don't have factories set up to manufacture that particular rocket. The "orbital propellant depot" concept -- made viable by the "new space" companies and their radically cheaper rockets has been much denigrated by the entrenched space lobby in congress, but the simple fact is, we now have experience in assembling modular craft in orbit (ISS), and thanks to modern computers and materials, spacecraft can be appreciable lighter. Plus, thanks to those same technologies (and better lunar surveying done in the last few years), we can robotically pre-land much of the equipment needed to mount a lunar expedition. Sure, the mission profile would look different, and building the hardware to land on and return from the moon would still cost billions, but the Falcon Heavy, which is really just a falcon 9 modified, will be ready within the next few years. With a green light today and consistent funding, we could easily have a permanent lunar presence by the end of the decade. I would guess the total cost would be less than ten billion dollars, if we were able to keep the government pork under control.

    2. Re:Research and Development by rgbrenner · · Score: 4, Informative

      And that trip to the moon cost $150 billion (in 2010 dollars). OF COURSE it brought about new discoveries, inventions, tools, etc-- IT WAS $150 BILLION! Saying that we discovered new things in the process of spending that much money does not mean we should automatically do it again.

      If our true motivation for a trip to the moon is to develop new things, then we have to ask: does spending that money on a trip to the moon result in more inventions than spending it on the National Institutes of Health? or the National Science Foundation? or the Department of Energy?

      The NSF got $7 billion last year... the Dept of Energy got 24 billion.. and NASA got 18 billion (+ we spent another 8 billion on military space funding (GPS, etc)).

      Have you seen the list of discoveries just by the NSF? Here's a short list of 587 recent discoveries. There's more for computing, engineering, math, nanoscience, physics:
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=5
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=8
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=9
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=10
      http://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/index.jsp?prio_area=11

      and that's what they did with $7 BILLION!

    3. Re:Research and Development by arth1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If we have $300 billion, why should we spend half of it on a LESS productive program?

      Because the sum of returns is bigger.
      If a > 0 and b > 0, then a + b > a.

      Also, if you believe that doubling the funding for the currently most effective research will lead to twice the research or more, you are wrong. There is no synergy effect in research, rather the opposite - a law of diminishing returns. You want to financially back single projects instead of heap funding, because the latter gets eaten by bureaucracy - especially the kind of bureaucracy put in place by conservatives to make sure everything is done as cheaply as possible costs an awful lot of money. NASA could become more effective again if the cuts were done among the paper pushers and bean counters, and not the engineering side.

  4. If budgets matter, EU cares less than US by rgbrenner · · Score: 5, Informative

    The US is spending 25.7 billion (17.7 billion NASA, 8 billion for the military (GPS, etc)) on space in 2012

    ESA spent 4 billion Euros (about $5 billion)... a total of 413 million EU on human space flight.

    There's a lot of talk in the paper about "global" exploration of the moon. I can only assume that means they don't plan on increasing that.

  5. Anything Please by GeneralTurgidson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We need kids engaged in science and exploration, not killing terrorists or idolizing warfare. Bring back the coolness of space exploration and the meaning of the word "hero"

    1. Re:Anything Please by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 3, Funny

      Unless they get the girl. Then they're the hero.

      Maybe if the scientist is a girl and gets the guy who's a fightin' astronaut. After all, we're all grown up now, right?

      --

      --
      make install -not war

  6. Re:Because Earth Is Doomed by rrohbeck · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have a feeling that even a ruined Earth is still way more hospitable than Mars, let alone other places.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
  7. Canned Ape by KeensMustard · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Unfortunately, although a good summary of possible research that could be conducted on the moon, this paper seems primarily to be a vehicle for advocating for humans to be sent back to the moon. To do this, it makes constant reference a to single paper (Crawford, 2004) which purports that human missions are superior because:

    1. Mobility: humans are more mobile than probes. This ignores the fact that, for a fraction of the cost of sending a human (say 50%) a robot could be developed and sent which was far more mobile than a human. Robots also don't need to be trained or selected - astronauts have a fixed cost per unit that doesn't reduce significantly by volume - 10 astronauts cost approximately 10x as much as one astronaut. Whereas the per unit cost of a robotic probe reduces per unit at volume - building 10 probes doesn't cost 10 times as much as building a single one.

    2. Presupposing that humans are better at drilling than robots. However, this fails once again to take into account that the constraint is the size of the drill - human missions require larger rockets, which coincidentally allows for a larger drill to be carried. Robotic missions launch with smaller rockets. Solution: use the big rocket. Launch a couple of probes at once, with big, capable drills. No need for the spurious meat bag attachment.

    1. Re:Canned Ape by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 3, Informative

      The science director for the Mars rovers estimated that a trained human could do what a rover does in a day in 45 seconds.

      That's three orders of magnitude improvement in productivity to set against the admittedly staggering costs of transporting and supporting humans.

    2. Re:Canned Ape by ongelovigehond · · Score: 3, Insightful

      After analyzing 1000 rocks, the chance that the 1001th rock is going to provide some new information is getting small. The only difference is that the rover takes a few years to analyze those rocks, while a trained human could do it in a few days. After that, it's probably better to send some new instruments, and look in a different place. Now compare the time and effort it would take to send a trained human to Mars, and have him survive for a few days, compared to the effort to send a small rover and have it survive for a few years. It's not so obvious the human still wins.

  8. Platinum! by bigpat · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Forget the space race, let the space rush begin! Let's mine some asteroids!

    Seriously, once space exploration can be economically self sustaining, self perpetuating, then maybe we can get somewhere.

  9. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, Mars. But, the moon is closer, cheaper, easier. The moon also provides a staging point from which to launch to Mars, and points beyond. Unless I am seriously mistaken, infrastructure and assets on the Moon won't degrade, or at least will degrade very slowly compared with infrastructure and assets built on earth.

    The moon is a very valuable resource, and development of that real estate should commence immediately. The moon is no longer a "goal", but a "waypoint".

    The only reason we don't have multiple bases on the moon now, is that mankind has it's collective head up it's collective ass. My nation, which actually put men on the moon, wastes more resources on the invasion of other nations than it would have taken to build and maintain a base capable of housing 1000 personnel. Of that much, I'm certain. I suspect that said base could be much larger, and that maybe a few satellite bases might have been built with all the money wasted in Viet Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Some of our lesser actions could probably have paid for one of those small satellite bases.

    Oh yeah. Read my third sentence again. Points beyond. To me, Mars should just be considered a practice mission. Plant a real colony, close to home, for practice, so that we can do the same further out. We NEED to spread out, so that a single epidemic, or a catastrophic event doesn't wipe us out!

    --
    "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
  10. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by camperdave · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The moon would make a lousy staging point. Why loft things out of a gravity well, then drop them back in, only to loft them out again. It is an utter waste of time and propellant. Assemble stuff in Earth orbit, then go directly (or as directly as orbital mechanics lets you go).

    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  11. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Endovior · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This. The moon doesn't really have much going for it but 'fairly close'; if you want a staging point, you're far better off with a space station of some kind. That way, you're not only even closer then the moon, but you don't have that pesky gravity well imposing an additional cost.

  12. ESA != EU by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    ESA is not the EU's space program, it's the all-European space program.

  13. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    But it has gravity which makes it easier for humans (less bone loss).

    Underground lunar facilities would provide shielding against cosmic rays (also better for humans).

    There's *stuff* on the moon we can mine & use on site (as opposed to launching it from earth).

  14. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by MachDelta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.
    It would also be much more durable than an orbital station, especially if it's partially subterr.. uh, sublunar.

    Basically, the argument is that it would be the better long (long) term investment that would eventually pay itself off. And heck, maybe there's an argument for doing both and baby-stepping our way into space (earth->orbit->moon->phobos->titan->???->orion slave girls!!)

  15. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by TFAFalcon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sure they'll run out, but it will give humanity time to figure out how to expand to the next pile of resources, AND give us experience in extracting them in non-terrestrial conditions. Or we can wait on Earth for a few hundred years, until resource depletion and resulting wars make it impossible to ever develop the technology we'd need.

  16. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by Kjella · · Score: 4, Informative

    If we can refine fuel and materials from lunar ores (possible, in theory) then the moon would make a great staging point to fuel up or perform final assembly for long missions. Instead of trying to lift obscene quantities of fuel and finished materials out of a much bigger gravity well, you just boost up the hard to build stuff with as little fuel as possible, and then slap it all together with moon-tape and ExxonMoonble.

    All other things equal, yes. Unfortunately heavy mining equipment usually depends on big diesel engines that need diesel and water as coolant, neither of which are easily available on the moon. So for power we'd need great fields of solar panels or something similar and without coolant dry mining would require far more frequent changes of drill heads. Then you have the same issue with smelters, they require huge amounts of energy so add more solar arrays. Then you need huge hydraulic presses to make it into sheet metal, again another power hog so add even more solar arrays. And we still only have sheet metal.

    Ore mining is heavy industry, like really heavy industry. Here on earth it seems so basic, only costing a few dollars but on the moon it would actually be a very, very complicated and expensive project. It would be a great achievement if we even manged to create fuel for an empty return rocket, mining ore is extremely much harder. And even if we could do that, it wouldn't make sense to send a rocket down to the moon to bring fuel back up, only make it a bit cheaper to do a moon mission. Going directly to Mars really has few disadvantages that I can see.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  17. Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead by TFAFalcon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Moons, asteroid belt, orbital stations. No other place to go at all. And if we get good at making those, there is no reason not to build a generation ship and start exploring the galaxy. Yes, humanity is going to end, but there is no reason not to try and make that end distant as possible.