NASA Funded Study States People Could Be On the Moon By 2021 For $10 Billion

MarkWhittington writes: The Houston Chronicle reported that NextGen Space LLC has released the results of a study that suggests that if the United States were to choose to do space in some new and creative ways, American moon boots could be on the lunar surface by 2021. The cost from the authorization to the first crewed lunar landing would be just $10 billion. The study was partly funded by NASA and was reviewed by the space agency and commercial space experts.

Comments

Re:There's no There there.

[Irate Engineer]

The Moon is actually a harder test of habitat recycling. Mars has good amounts of CO2 which may be used for oxygen extraction (see the MOXIE experiment). Mars does have a minimal atmosphere (not a complete vacuum) and possibly easily accessible water ice resources.

If we can figure out how to live in orbit or on the Moon for long term, without resupply, then Mars should be a snap.

Note that they ARE working on a lot of self-sufficiency initiatives on the ISS - water recycling and such. Long term this is stuff that needs to be figured out cold for mankind to go anyplace in space. Similar initiatives on the Moon would allow use of the regolith and perhaps water ices for material needs.

We should not go to the moon every generation or so just for the glory of putting more prints in the lunar dust; we should use it as a boot camp to train to go to other, less hostile places in space.