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The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

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Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#21

Post by WalterBright »

olivaw_daneel wrote: post #13
WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

The moon is certainly more accessible, but the purpose of having a base there is more less clear from both a practical and a scientific perspective. The scientific/engineering (and cultural/sociological) gains from a human return to the moon would be tiny compared to a Mars mission, and any funding (think tens of billions) allocated to such a mission will necessarily push a Mars mission back by a decade or more. Firs…

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive.

Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back.

I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (essentially) zero atmosphere, lots of radiation, the same problems with building a pressure dome, etc.

Landing men on Mars is certainly romantic, but it will be so expensive and time consuming that it cannot have much practical value.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#22

Post by WalterBright »

jk4930 wrote: post #17
WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

Would you be interested in bringing Empire to space? To the Moon is possible but difficult and short-lived. I'd prefer the ISS, bandwidth is okay, it would run for months, just need to keep the computational requirements reasonably low (should be possible for a turn-based game). Participants connect via Internet. I'd manage the space stuff, you bring the fame and the fun. (I played Empire Deluxe from 1994-2003 excess…

> Would you be interested in bringing Empire to space?

What, bring the moon under iron control? I like the way you think!

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#23

Post by WalterBright »

gozur88 wrote: post #15
WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

No, the moon doesn't make any sense. It's a big, dusty, radiation-blasted rock. Sure, we could build bases there, but why would we? That's the question Apollo managers could never answer and why the program was ultimately shut down.

> It's a big, dusty, radiation-blasted rock.

So is Mars. I do think we should be seeking out extremophiles on Earth and seeding Mars with them to see if anything takes hold, but I seem to be in a minority of one on that notion. :-)

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#24

Post by curtis »

WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

Mars has some stuff that the Moon doesn't: volatiles.

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatiles):

In planetary science, volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust or atmosphere. Examples include nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane and sulfur dioxide.

Of these the only one we're likely to find on the moon is water, and there probably isn't very much of it. In comparison, there's a whole bunch of water just sitting on the Martian surface in the northern polar ice cap. Carbon dioxide and nitrogen are available literally all over the planet -- sure the Martian air is thin, but compressing it is a fairly trivial exercise.

And if we can figure out how to aerobrake large vehicles then the delta-V to Mars isn't a whole lot different than to get to the Moon.

Mars is a much better science target as well. It's pretty unlikely that there was ever any life on the moon, but with Mars it seems like there is a real possibility. Mars also appears to have experienced geological processes similar to the earth. Studying the up close may allow us to learn things about similar processes on earth.

It's farther away, and that certainly adds a lot of difficulty and risk, but it is still reachable with essentially the same technology as the moon, and there are compelling reasons to go.

(That said, I totally think we should use moon missions as a testing ground for the technology needed for a Mars mission.)

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#25

Post by olivaw_daneel »

WalterBright wrote: post #21
olivaw_daneel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The moon is certainly more accessible, but the purpose of having a base there is more less clear from both a practical and a scientific perspective. The scientific/engineering (and cultural/sociological) gains from a human return to the moon would be tiny compared to a Mars mission, and any funding (think tens of billions) allocated to such a mission will necessarily push a Mars mission back by a decade or more. Firs…

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back. I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (ess…

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive.

The cost of shipping factories (and many raw materials) in pieces from the Earth to the Moon and then assembling them there should certainly outweigh just building and launching from Earth, especially as private companies perfect reusable rockets.

I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (essentially) zero atmosphere, lots of radiation, the same problems with building a pressure dome, etc.

Beyond just the gravity difference and the scarcity of any resources for in-situ utilization on the Moon, temperatures will vary from 100 degrees (celcius) during the day. This is a vastly different regime than Mars, which has a much more temperate day-night gradient.

Landing men on Mars is certainly romantic, but it will be so expensive and time consuming that it cannot have much practical value.

It will be both expensive and time-consuming, but just imagine the science a few geologists could do on Mars, and what they will reveal about not just the red planet but also about our own.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#26

Post by WalterBright »

curtis wrote: post #24
WalterBright wrote: post #12

The foreseeable future for man in space is the moon, not Mars. The moon is close - orders of magnitude easier to get there and back again. Its gravity well isn't a prison. You can probably launch stuff from there to earth with a linear accelerator. It's full of natural resources that can be used to build colonies and space ships. There's no environment to degrade. Mars doesn't make any sense. The moon does. And besid…

Mars has some stuff that the Moon doesn't: volatiles. According to Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volatiles ): In planetary science, volatiles are the group of chemical elements and chemical compounds with low boiling points that are associated with a planet's or moon's crust or atmosphere. Examples include nitrogen, water, carbon dioxide, ammonia, hydrogen, methane and sulfur dioxide. Of these the only on…

> adds a lot of difficulty and risk

That's a vast understatement. Don't forget expense and time! Orders of magnitude more.

I don't think there's any realistic way of getting a sustainable base on Mars without doing it first on the moon. On the moon you can learn from mistakes. On Mars you die from the first mistake.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#27

Post by WalterBright »

olivaw_daneel wrote: post #25
WalterBright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back. I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (ess…

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. The cost of shipping factories (and many raw materials) in pieces from the Earth to the Moon and then assembling them there should certainly outweigh just building and launching from Earth, especially as private co…

> scarcity of any resources

All we know about that is from a few bags of rocks. Nobody knows what the real situation is there, not even close. It might be like the proverbial caveman freezing to death sitting on a coal deposit.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#28

Post by jk4930 »

WalterBright wrote: post #22
jk4930 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be interested in bringing Empire to space? To the Moon is possible but difficult and short-lived. I'd prefer the ISS, bandwidth is okay, it would run for months, just need to keep the computational requirements reasonably low (should be possible for a turn-based game). Participants connect via Internet. I'd manage the space stuff, you bring the fame and the fun. (I played Empire Deluxe from 1994-2003 excess…

> Would you be interested in bringing Empire to space? What, bring the moon under iron control? I like the way you think!

Great, let's check it out. I'll send you an email over the weekend.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#29

Post by WalterBright »

olivaw_daneel wrote: post #25
WalterBright wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. Compare the size of the Saturn 5 rocket to get to the moon with the size of the rocket needed to come back. I do not see the challenges of building a habitat on the moon that much different from Mars. You have (ess…

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. The cost of shipping factories (and many raw materials) in pieces from the Earth to the Moon and then assembling them there should certainly outweigh just building and launching from Earth, especially as private co…

> shipping factories

The idea is to ship the factories that build the factories that build the factories that build the factories that can build large ships in large quantities.

Re: The Next Moon Landing Is Near, Thanks to Pioneering Engineers

#30

Post by olivaw_daneel »

WalterBright wrote: post #29
olivaw_daneel wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of being on the moon is having it as a massive manufacturing place for building things to move outward in the solar system. Lifting things out of the earth's gravity well is just too expensive. The cost of shipping factories (and many raw materials) in pieces from the Earth to the Moon and then assembling them there should certainly outweigh just building and launching from Earth, especially as private co…

> shipping factories The idea is to ship the factories that build the factories that build the factories that build the factories that can build large ships in large quantities.

If only life were an RTS game :)

If we are talking about taking advantage of resources not available on Earth, the untold riches of the Asteroid Belt are eminently more accessible from Mars.

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