NASA's Plans To Build A Human Settlement on The Moon (discovermagazine.com) 232
Nine private spaceflight companies are bidding on contracts to deliver robotic NASA payloads to the moon -- and Thursday NASA said they'd like them to start flying "this calendar year."
Discover magazine reports NASA envisions this "as the first step toward returning to the moon, this time for good." The first tasks will be to practice launching and landing on the moon, as well as answering questions about its surface... They will test habitation for future crewed missions. They'll prove that they can collect materials from the lunar surface and return them to space or Earth. And they'll establish communication networks between robots on the moon's surface, way stations in lunar orbit, and mission control on Earth.
But NASA also wants to deploy demo technology that can mine the moon's resources "to pave the way for human settlement," Space.com reports: The main lunar resource to be exploited, at least initially, is water. The lunar surface has lots of this stuff, locked up as ice on the permanently shadowed floors of polar craters. This water will aid lunar settlement and further exploration, and not just by slaking astronauts' thirst, NASA officials say. Water can also be split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel.
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is just part of NASA's broad moon-exploration plan, which prioritizes an open architecture that encourages cooperation with many commercial and international partners. (Indeed, NASA wants to be the commercial landers' first, but not only, customer.) One of the most critical pieces of this plan is a small space station, called the Gateway, which NASA aims to start building in lunar orbit in 2022. Gateway will be a hub for many kinds of lunar exploration, including sorties to the surface by landers both crewed and uncrewed.
If everything goes according to plan, NASA astronauts will take their first such sortie in 2028 -- 56 years after Apollo 17 crewmembers left the last boot prints on the lunar surface
Discover magazine reports NASA envisions this "as the first step toward returning to the moon, this time for good." The first tasks will be to practice launching and landing on the moon, as well as answering questions about its surface... They will test habitation for future crewed missions. They'll prove that they can collect materials from the lunar surface and return them to space or Earth. And they'll establish communication networks between robots on the moon's surface, way stations in lunar orbit, and mission control on Earth.
But NASA also wants to deploy demo technology that can mine the moon's resources "to pave the way for human settlement," Space.com reports: The main lunar resource to be exploited, at least initially, is water. The lunar surface has lots of this stuff, locked up as ice on the permanently shadowed floors of polar craters. This water will aid lunar settlement and further exploration, and not just by slaking astronauts' thirst, NASA officials say. Water can also be split into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel.
The Commercial Lunar Payload Services program is just part of NASA's broad moon-exploration plan, which prioritizes an open architecture that encourages cooperation with many commercial and international partners. (Indeed, NASA wants to be the commercial landers' first, but not only, customer.) One of the most critical pieces of this plan is a small space station, called the Gateway, which NASA aims to start building in lunar orbit in 2022. Gateway will be a hub for many kinds of lunar exploration, including sorties to the surface by landers both crewed and uncrewed.
If everything goes according to plan, NASA astronauts will take their first such sortie in 2028 -- 56 years after Apollo 17 crewmembers left the last boot prints on the lunar surface
Great, but no nuclear waste storage, please! (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Great, but no nuclear waste storage, please! (Score:2)
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Well, Barbara Bain is still around - we just need to make sure she’s up there to solve any problems.
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If we put our nuclear waste into space it would be better to launch it towards the Sun. It would just take a while to get there. But as it stands no one is going to risk the nuclear waste payload being scattered across the planet if the rocket blows up or fails to reach orbit and comes crashing back down to Earth.
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It takes a lot more energy to throw it in the sun.
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It takes a lot more energy to throw it in the sun.
Not energy. Rockets are all about momentum and delta-V.
The only technology coming close to putting large amounts of nuclear waste into space (moon or sun) would be an Orion nuclear pulse drive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Right, but energy is easier to understand than "delta-V", for someone who thinks you can push things into the Sun.
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Scott Manley just made a video [youtu.be] about this. In short, it takes 4 km/s delta v if you can wait 30+ years for it to arrive, which is not a huge problem given it's nuclear waste.
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Way more energy than dumping it on the Moon.
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How, explain. I wanna hear this
If you launch something from the Earth, it will inherit the orbital speed from the Earth around the Sun, which is about 67000 mph. In order to make it fall into the Sun, you need to negate most of that speed.
Suppose you only give it a 1000 mph straight push towards the Sun, then the net speed will be 67007 mph, in a slightly different angle, leaving the junk in an elliptical orbit intersecting Earth orbit at the point where you pushed.
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Once you're out of propellant, you can't apply even a small amount of force.
Space travel is all about delta-v. The total change in velocity you can achieve with a rocket craft is determined by the exhaust velocity and the fraction of its initial mass devoted to propellant. Higher delta-v's require higher propellant fractions or higher exhaust velocities, and there's limits to both.
For an object sharing Earth's orbit around the sun (like one that has just barely escaped Earth), hitting the sun takes a delta-
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What happens? (You do realize that Space 1999 was a really bad show for science fiction.)
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In all seriousness, folks: I like this idea (Score:3)
Re:In all seriousness, folks: I like this idea (Score:5, Insightful)
An actual self-sufficient colony yes. We're not remotely close to that though, it'll be an outpost. Earth dies, it dies.
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An actual self-sufficient colony yes. We're not remotely close to that though, it'll be an outpost. Earth dies, it dies.
Sure, but that's going to be true no matter what. As human beings who evolved very specifically to live on Earth, we are 100% dependent on Earth's biosphere, and barring some unforeseen technological breakthroughs (nanotechnology, maybe?), we will be for a very long time.
We can't even construct a viable self-sustaining biosphere-replacement here on Earth [kenyon.edu], never mind trying to make one work inside the additional constraints imposed by space travel.
Re:In all seriousness, folks: I like this idea (Score:4)
Maybe you think I'm stating the obvious but there's many people here who think sending a few people to the Moon or Mars is a meaningful backup/disaster recovery plan for Earth. If Earth going down will drag them with it clearly it's not.
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Posit that there is enough collectable (or synthesizeable) water and oxygen on Mars to sustain a large human population. All you need is 1000 breeding pairs of humans to ensure the population won't suffer a death spiral due to genetic inbreeding. Mars could plausibly become humanity's lifeboat with our current technology.
I wouldn't want to start that engineering experiment on the Moon for that kind of goal; there probably isn't enough cheaply accessible water. Its possible to devise an indefinitely opera
Re: In all seriousness, folks: I like this idea (Score:2)
Just because Pauly Shore screwed up that experiment does not mean that it can't be done.
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Let's do another one then. It's an interesting experiment, no matter what. I vote for making it a bit more interesting too:
All equipment must be dropped in the desert, in mock rocket capsules. Crew must be working in full space suits whenever they are outside. No materials or equipment can be used except the things the crew brings with them. Nothing from the atmosphere can be used.
Re: In all seriousness, folks: I like this idea (Score:2)
And no involvement of any of the Baldwin or DeLuise brothers, but one phone call to Brendan Fraser is allowed.
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Phone calls are allowed, but only with simulated latency.
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It can't be done because there's no money for it. It's the same reason that self-sufficient off-world habitats can't be built.
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If you want hope, there are chemicals that will alter your brain.
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Also, think of the joules involved to cause a life or planet ending event to the Earth. Would the Moon be far enough away from the Earth not to experience deleterious effects? Perhaps not.
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"having a working colony of humans off-world is good against the possibility of some major catastrophe on Earth."
The major catastrophe on Earth IS humanity.
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I agree. People with defective thinking like yours that conclude humanity can only produce negative consequences to their environment is not worth perpetuating.
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As I recall from something I read a long time ago the minimum size of a breeding population to avoid inbreeding problems is about 10,000. To assure this is truly self perpetuating then the population would have to be far larger, and likely selected against many inheritable diseases.
There are, and have been, populations like this on Earth. As one might imagine this turned out well in some cases and not so well in others. Part of this is social pressures on who is an acceptable breeding partner. If cousin
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the minimum size of a breeding population to avoid inbreeding problems is about 10,000.
Just take along some frozen sperm and ovum.
Or just take a thumb drive with the compressed diffs of a few million human genomes, and some CRISPR/CAS9 to splice it in.
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It also helps to have a ratio of 10 women for each man. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious...service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.
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The ratio doesn't have to be that extreme, unless it was "important" to limit the total amount of humans sent to a future space colony. And if the women are starting out young, there's no reason to think they'd have a problem popping out three surviving offspring in their lifetime. No need to even send out males if there's enough surviving sperm or pre-fertilized blastocysts.
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While you make a good point about having a large breeding population. The real problem with a self sufficient colony is the self sufficiency part. We're talking about an advanced industrial system that can produce everything that is needed to maintain a space fairing population. And then maintaining that industrial system for up to thousands of years (assuming something wiped out humanity on the Earth, it's going to take a lot of time to recover).
As an example, consider what it takes to build a computer, ra
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No Selenium.. on the Moon. That's ironic.
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No Selenium.. on the Moon. That's ironic.
Don't you mean it's "selenic" ? It's not ferric funny.
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No need to worry about that right now.
Raw materials
Are you a Lunar Geologist? Is the Moon made of cheese? I joke but there will be further exploration to determine what's available. We didn't used to think there was water ice there!
Lunar society/militaristic
Sure. You have to have discipline when leaving a door unlocked means everyone dies of hard vacuum exposure, or not following procedure means everyone's air gets poisoned.
War
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?
Numerou
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We didn't used to think there was water ice there!
We still don't have proof of it. Just spectroscopy analysis of the reflected light from various craters on the Moon.
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Really it is probably going to be militaristic in nature with strong authorities to enforce everything that needs enforcing, from garbage disposal, to making sure doors are closed securely to who breeds with who.
"Autocratic" would be the more appropriate word; militaristic implies needing to go to war against an opponent population.
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As I recall from something I read a long time ago the minimum size of a breeding population to avoid inbreeding problems is about 10,000. To assure this is truly self perpetuating then the population would have to be far larger, and likely selected against many inheritable diseases.
There are, and have been, populations like this on Earth. As one might imagine this turned out well in some cases and not so well in others. Part of this is social pressures on who is an acceptable breeding partner. If cousin marriage is considered accepted, even though far better mates exist, this can result in a drop of IQ, physical deformities, and all kinds of bad things for the future of the population.
There several problems with this.
First it is helpful to distinguish between the necessary size of a founding population from the how large a population needs to be over the long term, as these are not the same at all.
Successful founding populations throughout the human migrations over the globe have usually been small - a single band consisting of no more than a few hundred people, which is in itself not very diverse. The entire population of humans outside of African appears to have descended from an out-m
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And no, Neanderthals and Denisovans contributed no more than 2% of the DNA to this population, so they did not add much genetic diversity.
There's no real way to tell. The Neanderthal and Denisovan genome has been mapped, but its only a few samples. If their DNA is in our descendants, then basically Homo Sapien bred with other people that were basically as genetically different to them as dog breeds are to other dogs. (Does that make golden retrievers the master dog race?) Perhaps there's only 1% difference in genomes between Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens. Are you going to now suggest that caucasians "are going to become" extinct because
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As I recall from something I read a long time ago the minimum size of a breeding population to avoid inbreeding problems is about 10,000.
Its smaller. Once you get up to 1000 breeding pairs, the succeeding population can randomly breed without introducing deadly genetic inbreeding ailments. Its borne out with isolated populations of about 2000 people (a town) are able to exist for centuries without requiring external genetic contributors.The 10K number probably was picked as a generic population, where only 20% were breeding. It gets fascinating to speculate how much smaller that human population can be, if there is no issue with regulatin
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[...] having a working colony of humans off-world is good against the possibility of some major catastrophe on Earth.
Unless, of course, that catastrophe is the Moon crashing into the Earth [youtube.com].
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This is a remarkably bad idea presented at the direction of that fount of crazed ideas none-other than president Donald J Trump and his team of crackpots, crazies, and utter incompetents. This sort of poorly thought out operation is how Trump bankrupts his investments
In point of fact, a lunar "colony" will require vast investments which will mostly be spent on transportation to and from the colony. Mars is much worse cost wise, and offers major provisioning problems as well because expeditions there prett
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> This is a remarkably bad idea presented at the direction of that fount of crazed ideas none-other than president Donald J Trump and his team of crackpots, crazies, and utter incompetents. This sort of poorly thought out operation
Among the dreams of mars trips and a space elevator, which continue to sucker people and are nothing but perpetual-motion-level idiocy, a moon colony is something that will happen. Regardless of other reasoning or misgivings, the ability to start and maintain any presence on th
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but having a working colony of humans off-world is good against the possibility of some major catastrophe on Earth.
I prefer to rely on the Many Worlds Interpretation.
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I prefer to rely on the Many Worlds Interpretation.
But first we have to identify the gene that enables World-Walking.
PS Surprised nobody's yet pointed out one of the main difficulties in setting up a Moon Base: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
Will the Mexicans pay for it? (Score:2)
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You kid but the original space race was seen as an issue of national security.
If e.g. China had an Earth-independent colony on Mars or wherever, that could undermine MAD.
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There's not going to be Earth independent colonies for a long time if ever.
How many countries on Earth could maintain a space fairing industrial system on their own? Perhaps the biggest few.
Mars is not like the Earth where you can get by with stone age tech.
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Also there was a sizable technological overlap between moon mission and military technologies. If you can put a satellite into orbit, you can put communications or monitoring equipment on it - and a rocket engine fits on an ICBM just as well as a spaceship.
maybe some day (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to see this put in motion, but with the political climate in the US, not going to happen. The fights over NASA funding has been happening since 1970 and I doubt NASA will ever get decent funding.
My guess is China or possibly India will have a better chance of accomplishing that than the US
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My guess is China or possibly India will have a better chance of accomplishing that than the US
My guess is it will be a privately funded endeavor.
There's international laws against any nation claiming dominion over any portion of outer space. If a nation cannot legally defend their colony then it's going to be difficult to establish said colony. This is a legal hurdle that does not exist for someone that goes out on their own to declare a nation of their own on the moon or other rock in space.
I'm guessing that there will be a group of people that want to free themselves from the politics of Earth a
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My guess is it will be a privately funded endeavor.
I hope so. I strongly object to my tax dollars being spent on this boondoggle.
There's international laws against any nation claiming dominion over any portion of outer space.
This international laws is the Moon Treaty [wikipedia.org].
The United States is not a signatory. Neither is China.
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The Outer Space treaty also bans any countries from claiming dominion over celestial bodies, with most countries being signatories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
In reality, occupation is all that is needed.
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Also, treaties are upheld only as long as it makes sense.
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A nation can defend their colony as they own the buildings and infrastructure. Think of the high seas, no one owns them but ships on the high seas are owned and also subject to their home countries laws, even though private. Similarly a private colony is still by default under the private citizens home countries laws. Separation isn't easy as an embargo will kill a colony for the foreseeable future.
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India will study the problems, work the math and get the best production lines ready.
China is vulnerable (Score:2)
China is powerful, growing, but also vulnerable. Dictatorships tend to be grossly inefficient, as without a civil society there is nothing to stop nepotism and corruption. Sure, Xi Jinping is trying to have both Dictatorship and Economy, but I think that it will eventually falter.
China also needs to import food if its people are to maintain the high protein diet to which they have recently become accustomed..
The real danger is that as China's economy reduces its growth rate from the currently very high ra
Re: China is vulnerable (Score:2)
as
The US has amply shown that even with a civil society there is nothing to stop nepotism and corruption either.
Re: China is vulnerable (Score:2)
i hope that if women are stationed on the moon (Score:5, Funny)
that purple hair or a purple wig is part of their uniform. /s
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that purple hair or a purple wig is part of their uniform. /s
Because they are strong and indepenent and don't need a man in their life?
Oh - and they need to speak with the manager.
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that purple hair or a purple wig is part of their uniform. /s
Because they are strong and indepenent and don't need a man in their life?
Oh - and they need to speak with the manager.
Has no one seen Space:1999 or UFO?
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A large portion of the population hasn't.
The Moon is an Expense -- Mars is an Investment (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, let the national space agencies build settlements on the Moon. There is no commercial viability in those places. Commercial organizations will go where the money is -- deep space asteroids and Mars.
The Moon will be very costly to maintain humans on. The "plentiful" water on the Moon is in very relative terms. It's likely to take days of work for a glass full enough to drink. And the extremely abrasive regolith and pitch-black-only shadows plus zero protection for radiation is all going to add risks and work.
Still, I do think some inflatable habitats on the Moon, once buried in regolith will have their uses, in terms of science and long term commercial uses.
On Mars, north and south of the equator hold hundreds of large, fresh water glaciers more than 2 km deep. The soil elsewhere holds about two liters of water per square meter of regolith. And the regolith is very soft and less abrasive than soil on Earth. Metals in Martian rock are all the same as Earth except about twice as much, in proportion. Martian Basal is near ore-grade for iron. Waving a magnet over the surface is all you need to do to collect very rich iron ore. And the atmosphere and gravity make it easy to launch this stuff into orbit on single-stage rockets.
Although the Moon is closer and therefore easier to send help from Earth, it's also far more likely that help will be needed. It won't take much to become self-sufficient on Mars.
However -- I would prioritize exploration of lunar lava tubes. It's reasonable to think that larger concentrations of water ice might exist in them. If that's the case then settlements in lava tubes on the Moon could be very profitable.
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It won't take much to become self-sufficient on Mars.
For large values of much. How much nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium are easily available? How many of those minerals are in different areas of Mars. I'd guess it's like Earth, some minerals here and some there, except much harder to get from here to there.
Mars is big, as much dry land as the Earth (well 98%), with no rivers or oceans for cheap easy transport and even the air makes flying a challenge.
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If you have a plentiful energy supply, water may be recycled indefinitely. The moon is a harsh place to live, but I can see a small outpost maybe being established - not a truly independent settlement. More like a lunar ISS: A small crew, cycling up and down (Though on longer shifts, might be up there for years at a time) to carry out scientific experiments and maintain an array of astronomical equipment.
It'd still cost an insane amount though. Trillions of dollars. Far more than the ISS, and the ISS needs
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It won't take much to become self-sufficient on Mars.
This is hilariously naive. Think of all the things that you use in your day-to-day life, and how hard it would be to manufacture these things on Mars. Food, water, air, shelter, yes, those are obvious. But suppose you need a bandaid? Are you going to grow rubber plants? What if you need surgery? Even on Earth, modern operations take a LOT of infrastructure and supplies to achieve. Want to make clothing? A cotton sock, say? How much farmland do you think you can create on Mars, given the resources a
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The Moon will be very costly to maintain humans on. The "plentiful" water on the Moon is in very relative terms. It's likely to take days of work for a glass full enough to drink. And the extremely abrasive regolith and pitch-black-only shadows plus zero protection for radiation is all going to add risks and work.
[citation needed]. Your claims are at odds with this NASA study [nasa.gov] which suggests that "thermal extraction of the in-situ water [in lunar regolith] is an attractive means of satisfying water requirements for a lunar mission".
On Mars, north and south of the equator hold hundreds of large, fresh water glaciers more than 2 km deep.
If by "fresh water" you mean "the exact opposite of fresh water" -- it is my understanding that Martian water is more like a brine. Where are you seeing reports of large deposits of "fresh water" on Mars?
And the atmosphere and gravity make it easy to launch this stuff into orbit on single-stage rockets.
Mars' atmosphere is thicker than the moon's, and Mars' gravity is stronger than the mo
2028? What a waste (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yeah? (Score:2)
NASA "Lost in Space' (Score:3)
NASA couldn't find its way out of a paper bag nowadays.
Bureaucratic money pit that has accomplished near nothing in decades.
Next, "let's go to Mars".
Yeah. Sure.
Finally solved (Score:2)
The anti-vax quarantine problem.
IronSky,..? (Score:2)
Did someone show Trunp the IronSky Movies and this is what happend after he spoke with the NASA folks and he realized Mars isn't an option?
Why do this? (Score:2)
The US is $22 trillion in debt. Our infrastructure is crumbling. Vets are sleeping outside in the freezing cold and not given the health care they entitled to. The US cannot healthcare for it's poorest citizens. And I could go on.
How much would it cost to put a colony on the moon, and what is the payoff? What do we have on the moon that we don't have on earth?
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The first fucking Moon missions were because of Russia.
Now, it's because of China.
That's correct. Keep up, or get left behind. If there is a strategic use for the moon and planets, and we're busy whining about robots and meatbags, whoever sends the meatbags ends up winning.
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What is the strategic use of the moon and planets? Please explain without using scifi or references to any Heinlein novel.
Hmmm. That seems quite difficult since any strategic use of the moon would have likely been covered in some sci-fi somewhere.
I have some Heinlein novels in my possession but I have not read them yet. I do recall mention by Heinlein as a high ground position from which a military strike could be launched to most anywhere on Earth's surface. I'm sure some sc-fi covered the possibility of mining something of relative rarity on Earth but abundance on the moon. There's certainly been mention in numerous sci-
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Why would you launch a military strike from the Moon? Wouldn't it be easier to launch a strike....from Earth?
Maybe you'd launch a military strike from the moon because it's a Heinlein story that was written 50+ years ago.
Did you miss the part where I hadn't read the book yet? I assume that the why is explained in the book. I also assume that the books diverge a bit from reality. The challenge was to explain the strategic value of going to the moon while not repeating something in science fiction. I use that as an example of how science fiction, given the large numbers of stories in the genre, likely covered th
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Heinlein didn't do much in the way of Moon wars.
He was more interested in warping the social norms.
- Stranger in a Strange Land - He created a messiah.
- Farnham's Freehold - He flipped the Black and White races.
Heinlein was more about adventure and inventing story lines that normalized the taboo than dystopian Moon murder.
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The Moon is 3 days away and highly visible. Low Earth orbit is much better, come over the horizon and drop rocks or crowbars with guidance systems. A crowbar dropped from orbit has a lot of kinetic energy, almost as much as launched from the Moon.
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A crowbar dropped from orbit has a lot of kinetic energy
Orbital mechanics don't work that way. You cannot "drop" anything from orbit. And even if you manage to accelerate the crowbar enough to drop straight down, it would vaporize before it hit the ground.
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What is the strategic use of the moon and planets? Please explain without using scifi or references to any Heinlein novel.
Perception. Like anything else - why do we need computers, appendectomies, cars? Because we have a perceived need for these things. It doesn't matter in principle if the perceptions are ill-conceived or practical, because those too are perception-based opinions, or the political optic of a certain number of humans. Perception. If you disagree with me then, well...perception.
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Maybe if they launch something called "Sputnik" it would cause NASA to get off their lazy asses and actually do something.
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I hear the moon is full of cheese.
Cheeeese.... (where's Wallace?)
Next headline: "NASA plans to mine cheese on the moon".
Lame-O's
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I think NASA decided it did not want any kind of artificial gravity. The micro-gravity in the space station is something NASA wants.
A space station like the one in 2001, would require millions of tons of material, and cost trillions, maybe tens of trillions, to build.
Bottom line: what's the point?