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Japanese Company Announces Long-Term Plan To Develop the Moon (arstechnica.com)
"On Wednesday, a Japanese company called ispace announced that it has two missions planned to the Moon within the next three years and that it has acquired ride-share launches on two Falcon 9 rockets to carry out those flights," reports Ars Technica. "The company's founder, Takeshi Hakamada, also said he has a long-term vision to have a city on the Moon visited by 10,000 people a year by 2040." From the report: The two missions ispace announced Wednesday are an orbiter launch in mid-2020 and a more complicated lander-and-rover mission a year later. Both will be secondary payloads on Falcon 9 rocket launches, being released by the rocket's second stage in geostationary transfer orbit. From there, they will proceed to the Moon under their own propulsive power.
During a teleconference with several reporters, Hakamada said the company hopes to demonstrate to potential customers the initial capability to deliver 30kg of payload to the lunar surface. But he also has longer-term plans that will allow it to serve customers seeking to reach the lunar surface with larger payloads. Plus, the company is developing the capability to mine ice from the lunar poles to convert the hydrogen and oxygen into rocket fuel. "Around 2030 we expect to begin developing propellant and sending it to spacecraft in space," Hakamada said. He hopes that by then, there will be several hundred people working on the Moon, or in lunar orbit, to support an industrial base. A decade later, by 2040, he envisions a city called "Moon Valley" on the lunar surface, with a diverse array of industries and thousands of visitors per year. "We believe we can establish such a world if we can actively develop our capability in the current speed," Hakamada said.
During a teleconference with several reporters, Hakamada said the company hopes to demonstrate to potential customers the initial capability to deliver 30kg of payload to the lunar surface. But he also has longer-term plans that will allow it to serve customers seeking to reach the lunar surface with larger payloads. Plus, the company is developing the capability to mine ice from the lunar poles to convert the hydrogen and oxygen into rocket fuel. "Around 2030 we expect to begin developing propellant and sending it to spacecraft in space," Hakamada said. He hopes that by then, there will be several hundred people working on the Moon, or in lunar orbit, to support an industrial base. A decade later, by 2040, he envisions a city called "Moon Valley" on the lunar surface, with a diverse array of industries and thousands of visitors per year. "We believe we can establish such a world if we can actively develop our capability in the current speed," Hakamada said.
If that means 10,000 people at once, and we assume the typical ratio of service staff versus tourists (not a safe bet, with automation, but it gives us a ceiling), that means a long-term population of 3,000 or 4,000. That's an appreciable colony, but I think calling it a "city" is a bit of a stretch.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Lots of problems with this; not the least of which are the problems related to scarcity of an atmosphere and lack of stong magnetic field. I mean, how will they deal with gamma rays and bombardment by meteors? You're either getting your genes scrambled or your body turned to swiss cheese when it rains nickle. Who needs it?!
Twelve years from now, we'll have a good laugh reading this archived slashdot discussion.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
How will you finance it?
That's an awful lot of track to build before moon visits can begin.
No sig today...
How We Could Build a Moon Base TODAY
https://youtu.be/NtQkz0aRDe8
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
America put a flag on the moon first and that maked it our'n by interplanetary law and divine right o' kings. Back off, Japan.
The moon is the harshest mistress
No one can hear you scream in space!
I tend to rant.
We need to use resources and funds to go forward on earth preservation, not to go destroying moon (neither mars...).
As a Japanese people, he could by example fund thermal insulation of houses and buildings, this is the kind of action we need actually.
-- Laurent Pointal
At about >1 MeV the half value layer of many rocks is in the between 10 and 20 cm , so by 10 half value layer (about 1 to 2 meter) of earth rocks , you get 1/1024 of the original radiation. 1 meter or so is not far far underground. See for example El-Taher, Mahmour, Abbady 2007 (Indian journal pure and applied physic).
OK regolithe is about 60% the density of what they tested but even assuming an exponential model or even go conservative and have the HVL to be 1 meter (!), you still won't need to be that far underground to get only 0.1% of the radiation.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Haven't the Japanese learned a thing about space since the 1950s?
E Proelio Veritas.
Also I wonder if they will just put robots with rock launchers to kill all anime haters.
Wouldn't that lead to the extinction of humanity? We would kill off all our breeding population?
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Seriously, what has changed since Apollo 17 ? If you want an expensive holiday filled with danger then 2 weeks in Kabul is much closer.
Only the very richest people on the planet will be able to afford the energy cost of travelling to the moon.
So? It wasn't all that long ago that only the very richest nations could afford to go there.
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
It'll mean bad luck for far more humans if just a few are hoarding enormous amounts of the planet's wealth. And there's nothing unlucky about being a millionaire instead of a billionaire. So I wish for the best luck for the greatest number of humans.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The moon is a harsh mistress ...
I have long-term plans to develop a sexual relationship with Jenna Coleman.
I have a better chance.
(Although this is currently voted down -1:)
First - good choice.
Second - you are correct sir (or madame)! You do have a much better chance than this project does of succeeding.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
They're saying what I've been saying for years now, and I have no doubt they'll actually do it, and it'll be awesome. Talk about helping evolve our species! Moving out onto Earth's Moon is the first step towards moving out into our solar system, and from there, who knows?
About 30 years ago or so, that humans would return to the moon, colonize it and develop it - but they in all likelihood they would be speaking Chinese or Russian. (well this is a Japanese company - but his prediction looks like it was pretty accurate on the whole).
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
As I remember, in that book there was a Japanese version of a Libertarian colony at a Lagrange point- in which the only legal right was the right to die. Requesting that right was easy and swiftly delivered by drone.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
So the plan is to go from a large potted plant to 10,000 people in 19 years? Uh huh.
First... It's barren, not Barron.
Second, if someone is spending their own money, why do you give a fuck?
I particularly enjoy how you have decided what is more important.
I couldn't give a crap one way or the other as long as my taxes aren't being spent on it.
barren (brn) adj. Not producing offspring. adj. Incapable of producing offspring. adj. Lacking vegetation, especially useful vegetation.
You are a fucking tool. 300 years ago only the nobility and royalty could be rich.. Now anyone can and you are still unhappy.
You are also a psychopath. Instead of wishing that LOTS of people could afford to go to the moon, like a normal person with normal feelings, you wish that NOBODY could afford to do it.. like a fucking psychopath.. Ya know the type... "If I'm not rich, nobody should be".
You're the kind of cunt that thinks sex is dirty and disgusting because you aren't getting any.
You are an idiot.
There will always be a few with more/most. That's how it works, asshole.. Some few percentage of the population will always be smarter, or faster, or more inventive, or sexier.. These traits will help them get ahead.. They'll be able to send their children to better schools.. Those kids will do better. They will earn more.. And the cycle will continue.
Society rewards achievement. Those who achieve more will be rewarded.. Nobody forced anyone else to buy a Harry Potter book.. People bought them consensually because they WANTED to. So, she's a billionaire now... She didn't make it because she's a shitty writer.. Apparently enough people think she's a FANTASTIC writer... They rewarded her with their money.
You go figure out a system that doesn't strip people of their basic human rights and that deals with the "problem" of reward for performance and you'll win the goddamn Nobel peace prize.
By the way, you are a fucking hypocrite.. You all are.. I know for a fact that given the choice (with only a $1 difference in price) you would spend the $1 more to have a brain surgeon who trained at Harvard operate on you versus some asshole who trained at "Insert Shitty State School Name Here"
Well, being willing to spend even $1 more for something to obtain a better quality product will eventually send that $1 all the way to the top where it will concentrate. That is until you cunts can introduce what you are really after.. Equality of Misery...
For the second time, you idiot, IT IS SPELLED BARREN.
Do you cut/paste your comments?
DECREED, moron. You the same idiot that can't spell BARREN?
Say's who? What would make it "better"?
Hahaha you think anyone can be rich now? Economic mobility is long dead, the best predictor of income today isn't your skills but your father's income. There are no more opportunities to become rich today than there were for peasants to become royalty through a coup or military conquest 300 years ago. The royalty of old could only dream of the level of inequality and unaccountability that benefits our new capitalist hyper-royalty.
I do wish that someday, after we've invented Star Trek-level technologies like warp drive and fusion power and ideally some kind of teleportation, everyone should be able to go to the moon. But in our era? Fuck no! Hideous inequality that devastates society is required for any one person to be able to afford to go to the moon. The number of people who could afford such a thing is a gauge of how sick a society is. Thus I wish that nobody should be able to go except in a publicly funded effort for the benefit of the public, such as the original moon landing. What's actually psychopathic is to wish that anyone should be able to extract enough money from their society to be able to afford such a thing at this time.
You're the biggest idiot and loser of them all, you lick the gilded jackboot that stomps on the face of humanity.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Did you know that "strap on" spelled backward is "no parts"? Coincidence? I think not.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
There will always be a few with more/most. That's how it works, asshole.. Some few percentage of the population will always be smarter, or faster, or more inventive, or sexier.. These traits will help them get ahead.. They'll be able to send their children to better schools.. Those kids will do better. They will earn more.. And the cycle will continue.
Yes runaway inequality will lead us to a hyper-unequal hell unless we stop it with measures such as progressive taxation, as was done in the New Deal era. Thanks for reminding everyone.
Society rewards achievement. Those who achieve more will be rewarded.. Nobody forced anyone else to buy a Harry Potter book.. People bought them consensually because they WANTED to. So, she's a billionaire now... She didn't make it because she's a shitty writer.. Apparently enough people think she's a FANTASTIC writer... They rewarded her with their money.
A perfect example of the complete disconnect between skill/merit and "achievement." Apparently the free market thinks that J.K. Rowling is the greatest writer in human history, and Logan Paul or Kim Kardashian are more productive than most of the humans alive right now. Clearly this is horseshit. How is this good? And that's not even getting into the worst of it. Nobody's forced to buy Harry Potter, but people aren't exactly free to opt out of the basic necessities required to participate in the economy, unless they like hiding in a shack in the woods like the Unabomber. So those basic necessities, which are often controlled by an oligopoly or de-facto monopoly (telecoms, fuel, utilities) aren't exactly consensual choices. And thus neither is getting a job.
You go figure out a system that doesn't strip people of their basic human rights and that deals with the "problem" of reward for performance and you'll win the goddamn Nobel peace prize.
Oh noes, sounds hard, better stick to the status quo of runaway inequality leading us to a class of idle space royalty ruling over a planet of slums! Just kidding, many other systems work better, including tightly regulated capitalism with income redistribution.
By the way, you are a fucking hypocrite.. You all are.. I know for a fact that given the choice (with only a $1 difference in price) you would spend the $1 more to have a brain surgeon who trained at Harvard operate on you versus some asshole who trained at "Insert Shitty State School Name Here"
Well, being willing to spend even $1 more for something to obtain a better quality product will eventually send that $1 all the way to the top where it will concentrate. That is until you cunts can introduce what you are really after.. Equality of Misery...
Hahaha what a horseshit hypothetical scenario. In real life, price increases much more sharply than skill, that Harvard doctor would be 10x+ more expensive than the "shitty state school doctor" (good job hiding your snobbish elitism BTW, I barely noticed). So I might well not choose the Harvard doctor.
Wealth concentration can be stopped by governments, and can maximize happiness for the most people, rather than our current situation of making most people as miserable and stressed as possible to maximize the happiness of an elite few - an incredibly wasteful tradeoff.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Yes runaway inequality will lead us to a hyper-unequal hell unless we stop it with measures such as progressive taxation, as was done in the New Deal era. Thanks for reminding everyone.
We already have progressive taxation. Ya know, that's why you have to look up your tax rate on the chart... It's evil and it's immoral. Fair would be a single PERCENTAGE for everyone.. But that's not good enough for you jealous assclowns.. 10% of $1000 is a hell of a lot less than 10% of $1,000,000,000.
Apparently the free market thinks that J.K. Rowling is the greatest writer in human history, and Logan Paul or Kim Kardashian are more productive than most of the humans alive right now. Clearly this is horseshit.
I was kinda hoping you'd say that.. I suspected it, but it's nice to have the confirmation that YOU have decided what is correct and what is incorrect. Fuck the people who vote with their dollars, you and you alone will decide who is a good writer or who is most productive.
Oh noes, sounds hard, better stick to the status quo of runaway inequality leading us to a class of idle space royalty ruling over a planet of slums! Just kidding, many other systems work better, including tightly regulated capitalism with income redistribution.
Here we have one example of a situation that will allow some of these rich people, that you hate so much, to spend some of that "hoarded wealth" and get it back into the economy. But, of course you have a problem with that. How many jobs do you think this is going to create? Tens of thousands? Can't be super easy to get a rocket all the way into the moon.. The cost will likely be billions.. Billions that will be spent employing an awful lot of people.. From the guy designing the rocket all the way down to the guy working in the foundry that makes the metal components.
Hahaha what a horseshit hypothetical scenario. In real life, price increases much more sharply than skill, that Harvard doctor would be 10x+ more expensive than the "shitty state school doctor" (good job hiding your snobbish elitism BTW, I barely noticed). So I might well not choose the Harvard doctor.
Wealth concentration can be stopped by governments, and can maximize happiness for the most people, rather than our current situation of making most people as miserable and stressed as possible to maximize the happiness of an elite few - an incredibly wasteful tradeoff.
Who's the idiot? You think wealth concentration can be stopped by governments... That's one of the places the wealth concentrates you complete fucking asshole.. Obama is worth around $40,000,000 dollars.. He was supposed to be your (liberals) "man of the people". Yeah, he's right down there in the trenches with the rest of you....
Elitism? maybe... I'm nowhere near what would qualify as "rich". However, Harvard has developed quite the reputation for producing excellent doctors.. (and lawyers). If I had some condition that required brain surgery I would want the best possible person, that I could afford, to be doing the work. The more "in demand" someone is, the more they get to charge. Do you think Harvard's reputation is unfounded? What about Yale? There's a reason the Ivy league schools have their reputation. THEY HAVE EARNED IT. They take the best and the brightest and they educate and train the hell out of them. They produce people of serious skill. Do they have a monopoly on it? Of course not, but they have one hell of a success rate. They have been consistent. If it makes me an elitist to recognize that some people have more skill or more education of more intelligence than others, then I'm fine with that title. We aren't all equal in our ability. Sorry Charlie, them's the breaks.
The $1 wasn't meant to represent an actual number, asshole. It was meant to show that even liberals would, if they could afford it, choose the more highly skilled person if money wasn't an option. I get that
Hahaha you think anyone can be rich now? Economic mobility is long dead, the best predictor of income today isn't your skills but your father's income. There are no more opportunities to become rich today than there were for peasants to become royalty through a coup or military conquest 300 years ago. The royalty of old could only dream of the level of inequality and unaccountability that benefits our new capitalist hyper-royalty.
I do wish that someday, after we've invented Star Trek-level technologies like warp drive and fusion power and ideally some kind of teleportation, everyone should be able to go to the moon. But in our era? Fuck no! Hideous inequality that devastates society is required for any one person to be able to afford to go to the moon. The number of people who could afford such a thing is a gauge of how sick a society is. Thus I wish that nobody should be able to go except in a publicly funded effort for the benefit of the public, such as the original moon landing. What's actually psychopathic is to wish that anyone should be able to extract enough money from their society to be able to afford such a thing at this time.
You're the biggest idiot and loser of them all, you lick the gilded jackboot that stomps on the face of humanity.
I'm the loser? Man, you need to invest in a mirror. You are a liar and I can prove it. You say nobody can become rich.. Okay, explain Zuckerberg, JK Rowling, Musk.. Explain them, asshole. Those are just the ultra-rich.. The "holy-shit-thats-a-lot-of-money" rich. We'd have one hell of a list if we made a simple $100,000,000 our bottom limit.
I recall hearing somewhere that a college degree will add about $1,000,000 to your earnings over a normal lifetime. That's not rich? Go ask the guy in the 3rd world if that's rich or not. He'll laugh you out of the room.
200 years ago about 95% of the world's population lived in poverty. Today it's about 50%. What happened? Oh yeah, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution.
The royalty of old could only dream of the level of inequality and unaccountability that benefits our new capitalist hyper-royalty.
Are you on drugs? Seriously, are you on drugs?
Royalty could have you executed at whim. Royalty owned EVERYTHING, including your fucking liberal life. Royalty was above the law. The rulers of nations were HEREDITARY. I can point out any number of rich people and politicians sitting in prison, today, because they fucked over people. Fraud, theft... You name it... Today we put those people in PRISON. 200 years ago you went to prison if you angered the King, not because you had fucked over some peasant.
We haven't been to the moon in my entire fucking lifetime, and I'm not a young person. So, here's a company that's going to go to the moon (or so they claim) and it's not going to cost me a FUCKING DIME. Musk proved that you can go to space for way cheaper than what governments have been paying, so a private company is going to take it one step further.. And you have a problem with that because you are a cunt. You are so cunty that you'll cut off your nose to spite your face. You are so cunty that you won't let these rich people SPEND some of that money and get it back into the ECONOMY where it is going to create a shitload of JOBS.
What is a trip to the moon going to cost? $10M.... $100M??? It's going to be a lot.... and there will be THOUSANDS OF JOBS to make it happen. Thousands of STEM jobs.. Jobs that pay really well..... But... you don't want that...
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I see that huge yacht that Larry Ellison owns and I think "Man, that employed a lot of people just to build it. Those 150 people who operate it have one heck of a nice job.. He's not making any money with that yacht, he's just spending it.... And he's spending a lot...All that money flowing right back into the economy.... 150 people with jobs that take them all over the world...
You'd rather the yacht and associated jobs didn't exist..... Because you are a cunt..
We already have progressive taxation. Ya know, that's why you have to look up your tax rate on the chart... It's evil and it's immoral. Fair would be a single PERCENTAGE for everyone.. But that's not good enough for you jealous assclowns.. 10% of $1000 is a hell of a lot less than 10% of $1,000,000,000.
No thanks, keep your flat tax. We need much more sharply progressive taxation, with a top bracket taxed so heavily that it effectively creates a maximum wage. This prevents wealth hoarding, preventing working-class wage stagnation and keeping the whole economy running better in the long term.
I was kinda hoping you'd say that.. I suspected it, but it's nice to have the confirmation that YOU have decided what is correct and what is incorrect. Fuck the people who vote with their dollars, you and you alone will decide who is a good writer or who is most productive.
Not me, I merely used it as another example to point out the complete disconnect between "achievement" and skill/merit, in this case caused by network effects. The concept of "productivity" is used to plagiarize work, misattributing a ridiculous share of it to the C-suite. We now have regular human beings making hundredths and even tenths of a billion dollars a year for making fairly simple high-level decisions - sometimes terrible ones, as in the cases of Steve Elop and Martin Winterkorn. We should work toward correcting this madness by altering fundamental rules of the economy in a way that doesn't pick winners and losers but creates a fairer game for everyone.
Who's the idiot? You think wealth concentration can be stopped by governments... That's one of the places the wealth concentrates you complete fucking asshole.. Obama is worth around $40,000,000 dollars.. He was supposed to be your (liberals) "man of the people". Yeah, he's right down there in the trenches with the rest of you....
Hahaha you believe exactly what the conservative leadership wants you to, they've really turned you into a perfect useful idiot. And you've tipped your hand on where you get your news and information from - conservative chain emails, the only place you'll find that hilariously inaccurate $40M number. The Obama family's net worth was $1.3M in 2007 and $24M last year. This is not much by private sector standards, most CEOs can make that in a couple years. A middling fiction author can make over 40x more in a short career, as you've pointed out.
The fact that we aren't all equal in ability isn't an excuse to create a hyper-unequal hell. The world will be better for everyone if we artificially spread the wealth around a bit. I'm glad that homeless people can become rich, but decamillionaires and billionaires should not be a thing. And a world without them would have more millionaires and wealthier people on average. Nordic countries have demonstrated that greater equality means greater median wealth. Your world already exists, in Mexico and India.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Obama family's net worth was $1.3M in 2007 and $24M last year. This is not much by private sector standards
Right there.... Assuming that is fact, and I'm willing to assume that.... You are a hypocrite.. $24M is not much by private sector standards? Are you high? That's the top 0.1%.
No more debating with you. I don't debate hypocrites..