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NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

nytimes.com

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Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#41

Post by oldcynic »

lorenzhs wrote: post #31
TeMPOraL wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make propellant on the Moon (from water). The Moon is also a good place to test Mars-related procedures (couple dozen hours of travel beats couple dozen months in case of an emergency). Finally, I imagine building a telescope on the "dark side" is astronomers' wet dream.

Hm, hydrolox could indeed be possible. Didn’t think of that. But you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. It’s probably going to be a while before a moon base makes sense for economical reasons. Also, the moon does not have a dark side. It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines t…

Why can't it make sense on economic grounds? I would imagine that once there was a moonbase there would be a number of rather wealthy people who would like to visit.

After all if Blue Planet can cause interest in luxury $4m submarines[0] I don't see why the moon would be an exception.

Who knows, seeing Earth from outside might even trigger some activity to keep it viable for us!

[0] https://www.slashgear.com/aston-martins-next-luxury-vehicle-...

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#42

Post by gnarbarian »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #34
lorenzhs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, hydrolox could indeed be possible. Didn’t think of that. But you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. It’s probably going to be a while before a moon base makes sense for economical reasons. Also, the moon does not have a dark side. It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines t…

> you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. We can't forever just launch point-to-point missions from Earth's surface. The Moon meshes up well with industrial space activities around Earth, which we'll need anyway, and which'll create plenty of demand around itself for missions and resources. > It has a…

>The Moon meshes up well with industrial space activities around Earth, which we'll need anyway, and which'll create plenty of demand around itself for missions and resources.

This is essentially my argument. Short term it doesn't offer many advantages but without it, it makes the really big and cool industrial space projects more difficult.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#43

Post by jcranmer »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #11
gnarbarian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a moon base we could use as a base camp for missions to the outer solar system or mars? H3 mining is another thought. Edit: other ideas * Autonomous vehicles sent ahead of time to build habitats for people. * Large underground bases dug into the bedrock positioned at the poles collecting solar energy. * Long tracks to launch things into space/earth electromagnetically. * Mining of ice which could get split…

I guess that feels a little like England setting up a base in Greenland as a supply depot to stop at before crossing the Atlantic to the new world. There’s way more stuff at their home base so it’s hard to see how adding a far off stop in a desolate place will help.

Greenland is also a nice parallel for an entirely different reason. The land is at the extreme margin of habitability, definitely for the Vikings who settled there. And when the traders of the North Sea stopped visiting Greenland, the colony disappeared within a few generations. (Most historians now believe that the loss of trade is what killed Norse Greenland, not the Little Ice Age)

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#44

Post by jcranmer »

gnarbarian wrote: post #39
jcranmer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much everything on your list is not possible with our current technology. More importantly, it's feasible to develop this technology on Earth. The problem with going to the moon (or anywhere else in the solar system) is that the only thing we can do right now is science experiments. And there's a lot more impactful science that can be done for far cheaper than sending people outside of our gravity well. If you…

Aside from H3 I'd argue everything on that list is within our grasp if we tried to do so.

If you define it as "building infrastructure on the Moon to do so," no, it is not available with current technology. Where are you going to get your acids for refining, for example, if you can't scavenge from old piles of organic goop?

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#45

Post by TeMPOraL »

oldcynic wrote: post #41
lorenzhs wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, hydrolox could indeed be possible. Didn’t think of that. But you’d still need a very large number of missions to make construction and maintenance of the moon base cheaper than just directly going where you want to go. It’s probably going to be a while before a moon base makes sense for economical reasons. Also, the moon does not have a dark side. It has a far side that never faces the earth, but the sun shines t…

Why can't it make sense on economic grounds? I would imagine that once there was a moonbase there would be a number of rather wealthy people who would like to visit. After all if Blue Planet can cause interest in luxury $4m submarines[0] I don't see why the moon would be an exception. Who knows, seeing Earth from outside might even trigger some activity to keep it viable for us! [0] https://www.slashgear.com/aston-ma…

You can't hope to maintain a Moon settlement off the back of ultra-rich peoples' vacation fads. For one, the whole scheme would collapse once the super-rich get bored.

A moon base needs better and more stable funding, and for that it needs a reason. Science will not be enough, but the demands of a cislunar economy (propellant, off-world settlements for workets) just might.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#46

Post by gnarbarian »

jcranmer wrote: post #44
gnarbarian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from H3 I'd argue everything on that list is within our grasp if we tried to do so.

If you define it as "building infrastructure on the Moon to do so," no, it is not available with current technology. Where are you going to get your acids for refining, for example, if you can't scavenge from old piles of organic goop?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refining_(metallurgy)

>The repeated application of such fire-refining processes was capable of producing copper that was 99.25% pure.

Copper and iron can be refined reasonably enough using heat. Maybe it's possible to "pitch" metallic ore into very close and highly a eccentric orbit around the sun to help melt it down before "catching" it on the other side.

Perhaps acids could be brought up and recycled?

https://www.space.com/13247-moon-map-lunar-titanium.html

Titanium might be more difficult.

https://titaniumprocessingcenter.com/titanium-extraction-and...

Seems like asteroid mining would be pretty straight forward on the surface of the moon. The lack of erosion is capable of showing us exactly where they are.

Like I said it might take a hundred years before we can be totally self sufficient on the moon, but I think it's possible long term.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#47

Post by gnarbarian »

jcranmer wrote: post #44
gnarbarian wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from H3 I'd argue everything on that list is within our grasp if we tried to do so.

If you define it as "building infrastructure on the Moon to do so," no, it is not available with current technology. Where are you going to get your acids for refining, for example, if you can't scavenge from old piles of organic goop?

Here's a pretty cool research paper:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228918710_Design_an...

another:

http://www.chicagospace.org/strategies.html

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#48

Post by whatshisface »

maksimum wrote: post #30
whatshisface wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be hard for additional climate research to do anything (politically) that the existing climate research hasn't done already. Although, I understand how there might be some element of "Hah! Got'em!" among some groups. Overall, I see this as a move towards globally inspiring national pride projects and away from the more subtle and less-expensive "only PhDs understand how this is really important," tasks. It reall…

The fundamental issue is that it's relatively hard for us to reasonably account for future costs against present costs. I also think it's interesting that in more social equitable countries (like the Scandis) the public and politicians tend to take climate change more seriously. Is Maslow's hierarchy actually coming into play?

Another explanation might be that some countries have much stronger governments than others. In the US, the "man with a plan," pattern almost never plays out successfully.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#49

Post by xupybd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #37

Mars vs. Moon debates are getting ridiculous these days. Why not both? Thanks to NewSpace, getting out there is only going to become cheaper; we can, as civilization, afford both. Let ESA and NASA and China race to the Moon. SpaceX wants to go to Mars. If either succeeds in the next decade, we all win. The knowledge and experience gained is reusable for either, it goes into the same pool. And if we keep fighting over…

> Why not both?

Because it costs too much right now. SpaceX is providing NASA with rockets, I'm not sure they'll have a sustainable business model to get to Mars. I hope they do find a way but until costs come way down it's going to be tough.

Re: NASA Budgets for a Trip to the Moon

#50

Post by xupybd »

craftyguy wrote: post #35
unethical_ban wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) It is closer and more feasible to practice landing and returning from a planet than Mars 2) The ISS is going to de-orbit in the 2020s, so for low-gravity and habitat research, we can spend billions on another LEO station (which private industry is already tackling) or we can do something a bit more daring: set up shop on another rock. I think NASA should be allowed, broadly, to choose its own missions and goals, a…

> The ISS is going to de-orbit in the 2020s, Only because we are going to allow it. We could, you know, keep it in orbit and continue to use it. > I think NASA should be allowed, broadly, to choose its own missions and goals, and stick with it for longer than one administration. Their work takes more than 3 year election cycles. I could not agree with this more. Having every administration fuck up their agenda every…

> Only because we are going to allow it. We could, you know, keep it in orbit and continue to use it.

I'm not sure if it's safe to operate much longer than the 2020's without some major work and the running costs are astronomical. I'd love to see the ISS live longer but with limited resources going to the moon instead seems like a solid plan. At least on the Moon we might be able to get some practice in at harvesting resources off world. That's really going to be the economic key to kicking off a non war related space race.

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