European Scientists Make a Case For a Return To the Moon

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."

Comments

We're still /.

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Well, then that settles it.

[Lord Kano]

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

LK

Re:Well, then that settles it.

[Sir_Sri]

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

If budgets matter, EU cares less than US

[rgbrenner]

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.

Re:Research and Development

[NalosLayor]

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.

Anything Please

[GeneralTurgidson]

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"

Re:We should follow Dave Chapelle's lead

[Anonymous Coward]

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).