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India, China, and Japan Are All Planning Moon Missions (upi.com)
schwit1 shares an article from UPI:
India will make its second mission to the moon in 2018, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced this week. The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft consists of an orbiter, lander and rover configuration "to perform mineralogical and elemental studies of the lunar surface," the ISRO said... Several other countries, including China and Japan, are planning lunar expeditions in the coming years -- partly to better understand the moon's environmental conditions for the potential of human settlements...
According to Popular Mechanics, the ISRO is attempting to make the lunar landing on a budget of $93 million, which is about the same cost of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket that's scheduled for launch by the end of this year. The Falcon rocket, though, is only going into orbit -- and a $93 million price tag for a lunar landing could have impact on other countries' space plans.
India landed a spacecraft on the moon in 2008, and plans to complete this second lunar landing by March.
According to Popular Mechanics, the ISRO is attempting to make the lunar landing on a budget of $93 million, which is about the same cost of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket that's scheduled for launch by the end of this year. The Falcon rocket, though, is only going into orbit -- and a $93 million price tag for a lunar landing could have impact on other countries' space plans.
India landed a spacecraft on the moon in 2008, and plans to complete this second lunar landing by March.
Actually, the reality is that the USA has left space behind. If other countries feel the need to re-enact 50 year old Space Theater, that's their problem.
Mostly random stuff.
...is there really *any* reason to settle on the Moon besides enabling us to go further into the Solar System?
Isn't that enough of a reason? And, if we can learn how to build a self-sustaining colony on the Moon, it will be much easier to build one on Mars. Not only will we know what to do, we won't have to do all of the exterior work in hard vacuum.
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You know what worries me? It's that we are going to have generations of children raised by people who taught them both directly and indirectly to be terrified of anything and everything. And by people who have absolutely no sense of perspective.
You are here, a putative adult, expressing existential fear over the modern equivalent of the boogieman. Your grandfather might have been willing to storm out of a landing craft into a hail of well-planned machine gun and artillery fire, your parents had to live with the very real and immediate possibility that every airplane that passed over might just have dropped a 1 megaton bomb on your your school, and it was very close to happening on at least 3 occasions. Now, you are living in the lap of luxury and security, but are terrified by a computer simulation?
Even if the most absurd climate predictions come true in every detail, you assume it will destroy human civilization? People have dealt with one problem after another, successfully. Human civilization survived The Plague, for Christ's sake, something that they had absolutely no defense for, and just had to sit around, hour after hour, day after day, for decades, not knowing if the next time they coughed it might mean they are dying in the next 48 hours. Now a slow, perhaps mythical, rise in sea level is going to reduce the world to chaos?
Are you at all aware that people have worried about equivalent issues, all far more likely than this gibberish, for the entire span of human history and probably far before? Ever hear of Holland?
Teaching your kids that everything is always on the edge of falling apart and we are helpless to do anything over trivial problems is the WORST POSSIBLE THING you could do for the future of civilizations.
Your post is one of the most pathetic things I have seen in my 56 years. Grow the fuck up and learn to deal with REAL LIFE.
Right... because visiting all of the planets of our solar system, orbiting some of them, landing rovers on Mars, sending probes into interstellar space... none of that counts if we don't occasionally drop a lander on the moon.
You go to the moon. We're doing the real high tech work of re-opening coal mines.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's far from mythical.
It is not, however, an existential threat. It will not cause Western society to collapse (though some more vulnerable nations may not be so lucky).
It will be very expensive to deal with, and I expect that is what the GP is most concerned about (but not "terrified", as you seem to prefer to believe). Maybe look up how much the Netherlands has spent on its dyke system, and consider the cost of that for every coastal city on the planet. Have a look at what New York spent after Sandy's storm surge, and is now spending on new levees.
And that's just sea level. Have a look at all the other negative impacts described in the IPCC WG2 report, maybe read some of the many studies that attempt to count the net cost - and you too may be concerned for the sheer size of the bill any kids of yours will be stuck with.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?