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What Shall We Do With the Moon Once We Get There?
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Jun 08, 2008 05:58 PM
from the good-place-for-wedding-chapels dept.
from the good-place-for-wedding-chapels dept.
MarkWhittington writes "For the first time in over thirty five years, the Moon has become the next frontier. The United States has committed to returning human astronauts to the Moon by the end of the next decade. China has hinted that it intends to do this also. A variety of countries, including the United States and China, but also India, Europe, and Japan, have either sent robotic probes into lunar orbit or are on the verge of doing so." Contribute your favorite moon ideas below; I'd like to see it used as the set to film The Moon is a Harsh Mistress .
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New Method Discovered For Making Telescopes On the Moon 135 comments
NASA scientists have discovered a way to craft very large mirrors using carbon nanotubes, some epoxy, a little bit of aluminum, and large quantities of lunar dust. They say the technique will allow the construction of massive telescopes on the moon without the expense and risk of transporting the mirrors from Earth. Douglas Rabin of the Goddard Space Flight Center is quoted saying, "Our method could be scaled-up on the moon, using the ubiquitous lunar dust, to create giant telescope mirrors up to 50 meters in diameter." While this breakthrough was relatively cheap, NASA is currently offering up to $10 million for other good lunar research projects.
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Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry Grommit... (Score:5, Funny)
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They mostly come at night...mostly (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
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How about doing it smart? (Score:5, Insightful)
What should NASA do? Damned if I know. Or care all that much for now. AFAIC the real concern is for a private group to choose some location well away from the various government-run bases and just bloody well start shooting itty bitty robots up there ASAP. As I've said about Mars [typepad.com], the rational thing to do is to start processing minerals, digging tunnels that are deep enough to be radiation resistant, establishing power generation capacity, and maybe even starting a few teeny separate greenhouse enclosures in which the beginnings of working ecosystems can get going. In the next few years. Not to mention building the kinds of expertise one only gets through real world implementation.
To wait to do this with human-optimized vehicles or even simply to wait to do this until the billions of dollars in funding needed for a full mission can be rounded up and the milions of man-hours in research and development needed to make a moonbase human-capable is as boneheaded as, say, using only Microsoft products "because that's the established approach".
We already know that dust is going to make every job bloody difficult. We already know that our attempts at equipment that reliably works in vacuum and under those temperature changes haven't gone all that well. We have a lot of learning to do. And it will all go a lot better if the first humans get there to find as much mass and equipment already waiting and running as possible. So let's start with the least demanding tasks and get more ambitious as we go.
So I say:
A.) Put a couple of relays in Moon orbit. This massively cuts power and complexity demands down for the devices we later send moonside. If they can take pictures of the moon as they orbit, that's jim dandy too.
B.) Have at least two teams launch at least two different approaches to digger robots. These robots will, hopefully, if nothing else, build the first enclosures in which other robots can do things like wait out the worst radiation storms.
C.) Send more robots to survey the local area for mineral resources. Each package also includes some amount of additional power generation capacity. Ideally some mix is used of solar, temperature differential-based systems, and other approaches.
D.) And only then send robots to start doing things like making rocket fuel from moon mass.
Maybe I'm wrong about the ideal order. But I'm pretty damn sure that I'm right about my basic point. We should be launching payloads as soon as we possibly can. Barring some other group stealing what we send, we lose far more than we gain by waiting. /. classic become true.
Oh, and if we do it right, the group that does so may even get to have that
E.) PROFIT!!!!
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Opens up the solar system for us (Score:5, Interesting)
But more important than that, is that from that uranium, we can breed plutonium that we can use to power ships as well a sats elsewhere and perhaps a base on mars. In addition, with that kind of power, we can build a rail launcher on the moon. Even more important than the He3, is the simple fact that it opens up the solar system for us. That uranium being there will do that for us.
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Re:How about *nothing at all*? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:How about *nothing at all*? (Score:5, Interesting)
And IIRC, the He3 on the moon is still pretty thin on the ground. You've got to process a lot of regolith to extract it.
I'm all for going back to the moon and staying there, but He3 is not the reason. Learning to live there IS a good reason, IMHO. I'm just looking forward to the day when automated fabrication technology gets to the point where we can build maybe 80-90% of what we need in-situ without huge factories and manual labor. I'm not expecting magical nanotech assemblers any time soon, but you don't need to make EVERYTHING there. Just make the big, heavy stuff - and learn to design what you need using the materials you've got, even if it's sub-optimal.
The day when an off-world colony can produce enough wealth to pay for what it must get from Earth is the day we stop being an Earth-bound species. We'll get there by working both ends - reducing what needs to be sent up (and reducing the cost of doing so), and increasing the economic output of an off-world colony. But we need to go there first, even though it's expensive, and start learning the lessons that need to be learned.
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Re:How about *nothing at all*? (Score:5, Interesting)
You said we'd be building big, heavy stuff in factories on the moon. Yes, that's the right goal to aim at. But what will that "stuff" be? Not construction beams for a new lunar suburbia. They will be parts for space stations, space telescopes, spaceships, and all kinds of other stuff that we will want in orbit. Why should that stuff be made on the moon? Well, because all the raw resources are there, because automated manufacturing there should be feasible, and because it will be very easy to launch heavy things into orbit from the moon: With such low gravity and essentially no atmosphere, things can be launched with a simple railgun.
I don't think it will be so great to live on the moon, with all that nasty dust and weak gravity. I say we should cover the moon with solar panels and maybe some fission reactors, and use all that energy for smelting lunar ore, both precious and ordinary. There is no end to the usefulness of the satellites we can make from raw materials on the moon. One of those things: photovoltaic cells which we could railgun into geosynchronous Earth orbit to generate clean power for us. Another thing we need in orbit are big construction pieces from which we could build a large, rotating and mostly self-sufficient space station. That's where we should live - in orbit (maybe at a liberation point), not on the stupid moon.
Also, try to imagine assembling segments of a gigantic (as in 100+ meter) metallic mirror in lunar orbit. The resulting telescope could actually resolve exoplanets!
That's what we should be doing on the moon! Of course, before all that is possible we still need to take steps to refine our technology of automated manufacturing, and we don't need to be on the moon to do a lot of that work. But we do need to learn about the special conditions there, like issues having to do with the dust, the diversity of the geology, the feasibility of certain smelting techniques, the optimal design of nuclear powerplants for the moon, etc. (Yes, the first operations must be powered by fission, get over it. It's the fucking moon.)
So there's my answer.
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Re:How about *nothing at all*? (Score:4, Insightful)
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whether there's He3 there or not (Score:4, Interesting)
There are lots of things one can do if one has zero-gravity, for practical purposes, free energy, and transportation.
Once upon a time, the American West was looked at as an unprofitable, useless wasteland.
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The Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Obvious (Score:5, Interesting)
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Hey, Mr. Monkey, don't be asking why. (Score:5, Funny)
"You know you can't mess
Re:Hey, Mr. Monkey, don't be asking why. (Score:5, Funny)
We shall blow up the moon ourselves, if necessary. Nobody can deny us our right of self-defense against the moon. If the French happen to think the idea of blowing up the moon is silly, then we'll rename food products just to spite them ("terrestrial fries"). Anyway, the French don't have the right to oppose our ideas because they're only French and they don't even run the planet anymore, much less the solar system.
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Re:Hey, Mr. Monkey, don't be asking why. (Score:5, Informative)
That's somewhat true. Pre-WWI, they were called German fries. We rechristened them French Fried in honor of our allies. No doubt, they were too polite (and desperate for our help) to object to denegrating their cullinary reputation.
And then 100 years later we think they will be insulted. Kinda sad.
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TFA is vacuous (Score:5, Insightful)
YAWN
Re:TFA is vacuous (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:TFA is vacuous (Score:5, Funny)
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We came, we saw, we left. (Score:5, Insightful)
On second thought ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Build a Huge Telescope (Score:5, Insightful)
Also radio telescopes! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Also radio telescopes! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Also radio telescopes! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Also radio telescopes! (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Also radio telescopes! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Also radio telescopes! (Score:5, Informative)
The ones we'd be observing with the telescope. I wouldn't call that "interference" - it's the signal.
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Re:Build a Huge Telescope (Score:5, Interesting)
Most importantly, I'm reminded of Amara's law: we're going to overestimate its usefulness in the short term, and underestimate it for the long term.
*The lack of an atmosphere will make it so that heat doesn't dissipate in that direction very quickly, but I'm thinking that the dark side of the moon itself would be a kickass heat sink.
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Re:Build a Huge Telescope (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Build a Huge Telescope (Score:5, Interesting)
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Porno Studio (Score:4, Funny)
Build Orbtiting Solar Power Stations (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this kind of thing would need serious investment, but you could use such a network to reder most earth based power generation obsolete, and you'd get a nice global death ray system thrown in for free.
Ignore it. There's nothing there we care about. (Score:5, Interesting)
The moon is a canard. As is living on Mars.
I predict that within 500 years humanity will have spread throughout the solar system. But we won't live on a single planet or planetoid. Nor will we "teraform" any planets or moons in our solar system. We will instead *build* our habitats and live within them in orbit around various planets and moons which have materials we happen to need.
I could imagine a large rotating space station in orbit around Titan, dropping a nanotube straw to the methane atmosphere and/or oceans for energy. Or we might live in orbit around Earth, Venus, or Mercury in order to extract abundant sunlight for energy conversion.
Once we get off of Earth's gravity well, why in God's name would we build another society within another gravity well? Space is where we should live. And in space, we should build habitats suitable to our evolutionary history. And once we can do that, the notion that we waste our time looking for "habitable planets" becomes a canard. Our only interest is to look for stars and planets with enough energy to support our biological needs.
Live there (Score:4, Interesting)
obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Re:obvious (Score:5, Funny)
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Rape it (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for saving the rainforests, but the moon is essentially a rock.
Re:Rape it (Score:4, Insightful)
Presumably we would only extract the interesting things, like useful metals or He3, and leave behind the useless chunks of plain old boring bulk rock there. We have plenty here. Aside from mystic voodoo, the gravitational force should therefore remain more or less intact.
And if we ever reach the point where we can theoretically actually move enough of the Moon here to the Earth to make a difference on the raw gravitational front, then I think we'll be able to handle most of the ill effects of any removal.
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Create fake fake moon landing videos (Score:4, Insightful)
Obviously... (Score:4, Funny)
1. No Starbucks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Some thoughts on lunar living (Score:4, Interesting)
The only real reason for lunar operations is industry. Judging what is on the Moon from a few measly soil samples and surface imaging is a joke. We really don't know much of anything about what might be there. We do know that a lot of stuff has impacted on it though. Prospecting will be an early high priority task.
Once people start staying there more than a few days there is going to be a significant degradation in the local vacuum and the moon will start to acquire a tenuous atmosphere. Humans are a contaminant wherever we go. The extraction of lunar O2 will be first and foremost and that is mining plain and simple. Tons of lunar material will have to be processed on a monthly basis leading into the thousands of tons per year. We will create tailiings from this process and they will have to be dealt with. If water is found the same thing will happen there.
You can forget about lunar surface habitats. Unless you are fond of mutation. Living will be a lot like being on a submarine for a long time. The establishment of habitation space that does not require the delivery of hardware from earth will be a prime task. You can expect lots of digging, detonations and surface fracture and pulverization activities. These are all dirty, ugly things best done by people without PhD's. Scientists will be seen as a nuisance for quite a while.
Preparation of a large landing pad area will be also be a high priority as will the manufacture of local roads to suppress dust . The manufacture of many large cisterns for water and waste storage will be a big task too. Water paranoia will be the guiding principle on the moon. It will not be wasted. A complete system for the synthesis, liquifaction and storage of LO2 and LH2 also has to be installed using the decent stages of lunar landers for starts. The synthesis of real soils for lunar agnriculture will also be critical. In short, all the boring stuff that few people even thing about are the top priorities on the moon- not searching for He3.
If we want to do this it will take hundreds of people on the surface at any time and they will have to be there for at least 1 year stints to make it economically digestible. The transport is what eats you alive here. You must compel a moon-centric thought process as soon as is practical. If everyone is looking to earth to bring every damn thing the colony will fail. You must be able to repair and replace everything. Most aerospace technology is not amenable to this at present. There will be an evolution of hardware that works on the moon. High performance stuff that is finicky or prone to failure will be ditched. It is this engine of innovation that will be one of the most valuable things we "discover" on the moon.
As for the far side of the moon being radio quiet- not for long. The L2 point is a valuable location and it needs a telecom relay satellite to talk to it. One of the first things we will put up will be a telecom network in orbit and/or at L1/L2. Exploration of the far side will be a far higher priority than a radio telescope. That means comm, machines with electronics and hence noise. Not that they won't declare some small area to be "radio quiet" .
If we discover industrial scale sources of water on the moon its value as a base will be incredible. It is a bio-safe location for people to work. By that I mean they can live and work without the fear of being irradiated to death. What an astronaut will put up with for a few days is utterly different to what a welder should have to put up with over a two year tour of duty. We need the best welders, mechanics,seamstresses, cooks, farmers, doctors, dentists etc etc to make this work. If it is perceived that working on the moon is a death sentence it will be hard to find good help. Working in high orbit like L2 and L2, while necessary, will be minimized. Those are just the equivalent of runways anyway- not much industry that cannot be automated there.
If we go to the moon with some sort of tou
Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Been there, done that. It's a big airless rock. Unless we get some way of lifting stuff to orbit at a price comparable to, say, China to US air freight, forget it. Chemical rockets are about as good as they will ever get, which is not very. Maybe with nuclear rockets or something new, but redoing Apollo is pointless. (Also, the current NASA would botch it.)
We have trouble keeping the ISS supplied and staffed, and can't find any really good reason for having built it in the first place.
Re:It's made of cheese. (Score:5, Funny)
Come on you can do a better job than that:
1. Mine the cheese
2.
3. Profit!
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Re:going to the moon (Score:5, Insightful)
For some values of "short".
Reminds me of Seward's folly. Buy Alaska? What a total waste of money. Can't possibly justify such a waste while there is still one "Poor person" left anywhere in the world.
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Um, education, not welfare (Score:5, Informative)
Education [spacepolitics.com], actually.
It's one thing to be critical of decreasing space program funding to pay for math & science education, it's another thing to imply that the funding will be diverted to handouts.
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Re:What about the candidates? (Score:4, Informative)
Someone has already pointed out that the proposal was to fund education, not welfare, so I'll skip the blatant lie and instead comment on the gross distortion: he doesn't want to slow "the space program" -- he wants to delay the Constellation program, arguably the biggest and most pointless waste of money in the space program. He's all for continuing to fund and advance the actually useful parts of the space program.
Hmm. A gross distortion, an outright lie, and then a made up statistic about how long the money would last in its other function. How does something like that get modded "Informative"?
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Re:Simple answer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it. The only reason
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