A new Moon race has begun • Hacker News Board

Re: A new Moon race has begun

#31

Post by dntbnmpls » Fri, May 08, 2020, 7:45 AM UTC

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #10

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landing on the moon in 2024 is far less ridiculous a statement than Kennedy's moon announcement in 1961 was. We can do it, we just don't want to badly enough.

Manned spaceflight and stations are unnecessary in the near term. Autonomous drones and machines can bootstrap colonization. A mining refinery can be bootstrapped easily, all remotely. Then asteroid mining droids will drop their payloads there for refinement and processing.

Private space companies see space tourism as a major source of revenue in the near term. So manned spaceflight and/or stations are necessities in the near term. Mining and colonization will follow, but we need to get the private sector up and running first.

Re: A new Moon race has begun

#32

Post by gerland » Fri, May 08, 2020, 8:18 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #2

The projected dates of 2023 and 2024 for a gateway station and landing are completely unachievable. I assume it's tied into boosterism for the reelection campaign: "Look at what we're going to do in our second term." It's sad that nobody in the media is calling them out on this.

I'm not an expert, but it seems to me than other than a PR some of those dates are also set to provoke higher efficience and appease taxpayers. Once the project is underway and billions were spent it's much ahrder to back out.

Re: A new Moon race has begun

#33

Post by blegit » Fri, May 08, 2020, 9:49 AM UTC

When ever there is talk of mining The Moon, I think of the Moon mining scene in the movie Time Machine and it makes me mad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs6eKmTCDY&feature=youtu.be...

Re: A new Moon race has begun

#34

Post by Rerarom » Fri, May 08, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

rowanG077 wrote: post #20

Rerarom wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was way more funding in the 1960s than there is now.

His comment literally states that it's possible but that we just don't want it enough. Not enough funding is the most direct manifestation of that.

Yes but funding in the 1960s was ridiculously large, because they wanted so hard to beat the Russians. (Maybe if this wasn't so, they would have built a much more robust architecture and slower, and we would have the first man on the Moon in the 80s and Moon cities by now.)