Here's a link to the article.
Of particular interest, this bit:
If future investigations find the quantities to be particularly large, this water could become a useful resource for any astronauts who might base themselves at the lunar poles.
"It can be used for drinking water," said Mike Wargo, Nasa's chief lunar scientist for exploration systems.
"You can break it down and have breathable air for crews. But also, if you have significant quantities of this stuff, you have the constituents of one of the most potent rocket fuels - oxygen and hydrogen."
Is this the first step in starting the colonization of space? First, our moon, and from there perhaps the rest of the solar system? Will we see a moon base in the next 20 years? 30? Within our lifetime?
While there may not be enough water for anything substantial, the opposite could also be true.
I suspect we'll have a military base there first, though something like the I.S.S would be ideal, a co-operative effort.
Posts
They bombed the moon because it was suspected there might be water at the poles, in craters. Before the results actually came back from the bombing, the Indians had sent up their own probe and found evidence of water.
So, now we have two independent findings which corroborate one another. This most recent announcement is about NASA's discovery.
Obama doesn't strike me as such a guy, at least not at the moment. It's pretty low on the priority scale. First we'd have to prove that we can still get people up there and back; we've been long out of practice.
Or some other country would have to be confident enough to try it, but remember only the US has shown proof of concept. Everyone else would be making their first trip.
It would also violate numerous treaties. The Moon is like Antarctica. No one country can lay claim to it, and it can't be used for military purposes.
Having some sort of base there seems like it would be more sensible than something in between like the ISS currently. That thing needs to get its orbit fixed constantly and everything just generally sucks. The only real negative to the moon would be needing more fuel and more of a time delay, but that seems like relatively small issues all things considered. Plus they wouldn't be able to do a colony drop in opposition to our tyrannical dictates. Still, it's not like they're going to do anything cool in space for decades at the earliest. When the ISS finally comes crashing down a lunar base might be its logical replacement.
So someone needs to shoot down the ISS is what you're saying.
However, much like the Antarctica treaty, no one would enforce (or is actively enforcing) it. Its success is just due to the fact that no one is crazy or desperate enough to want to mine Antarctica. Still, it wouldn't warrant the expense to make a military base on the moon at this point.
Wasn't there talk in another thread about it coming down/being brought down anyway? Or are the resupply missions going to fix that little issue?
I don't think it'll ever warrant the expense as long as there's nobody there, even if the cost was pretty low. What would a military base on the moon even do? Take potshots at suspicious-looking craters?
If there were other bases there, a military base would make sense. But as it stands, there's no strategic reason to stick weapons up there. At least not any of the weapons that currently exist.
To be prepared for when the damn bugs strike Rio.
God, can you imagine what kind of world we would have if all the military budgets of the world were dedicated to shit in space?
God, I hope not. Fuck the ISS. The only thing in space lamer than the ISS is the space shuttle.
Well, and maybe Intergalactic Carrot Top.
To beat a dead horse into the fine paste of a dead horse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rods_from_god
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_A_Harsh_Mistress
Moon bases are also flippin' sweet. Space is awesome.
Fact #2: Wales live in water
Fact #3: Wales are full of delicious clean burning oil(and precious ambergris)
I think we all know what the logical conclusion is here.
edit: Seriously though, w00t sort of. Between water, a good amount of sunlight, and not need too much more then regolith to make cementlike stuff, an awful lot of the resources we'd need to build a moon base are already there.
That the Welsh are an aquatic people we should exploit for their oil?
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
EDIT: Read the posts starting at the first one at 4:34 AM: http://twitter.com/LCROSS_NASA
This is fucking great, I can't wait to see what comes of this for our space programs (I don't care what nations do what first) over the next couple decades.
- Water (possibly now answered)
- Air (also possibly answered)
- Power: Would solar panels be enough to generate the power necessary to heat the station? Would they need to send some kind of fuel?
- Solar flares: Earth is protected by our magnetic shield but what would they do on the moon? What kind of material do you need to build the base and how do we get it up there? 50 shuttle trips? Do we need a space elevator before anything can happen on the moon?
- Gravity: Do you use a magnetized floor and boots to keep scientists/astronauts grounded? How do you deal with the physiological issues? I'd imagine they'd have to do the same thing as ISS and keep flying scientists back fairly often to avoid major trouble.
they don't it be like it is but it do
Couldn't 4 potentially solve 3?
I mean, if they found a way to protect a base from the radiation from the flares there's no reason they couldn't use said radiation to heat/power the base itself.
I'm obviously not a scientist. Well...I have a degree in political science but that doesn't really help here.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
My guess is we'd build the base into a hill on the moon and use it as natural shielding from solar flares. God knows how we'd manage that though. Construction on the moon, heh. We can barely walk around there.
Gravity: Rubber bands plus treadmill? Just deal with the 1/6 gravity for non-exersize. Maybe extra velcro and rubberized surfaces.
Feel free to add me on whatever network, it's always more fun to play with people than alone
I doubt we could really do any big construction out there - hence why I was thinking you'd build it in smaller modules and ship those up there.
they don't it be like it is but it do
The radiation thrown off by solar flares is not particularly conducive to power generation.
Solar energy is substantially higher on the moon than Earth (Earth's about 800W-1kW/square meter, Moon's probably 1.5 times that) so solar cells would be much more effective there than here. Assume they use top-of-the-line solar cells (I've heard labs report up to about 50% efficient) and you've got 750W/m^2. I'm not sure how often the sun would be blocked from sunlight by the Earth but probably several hours a day at least, so maybe an average of 500W/m^2.
I have no idea how much heating/cooling it would take to keep a crew alive, but I would guess several kilowatts. At the very least, you'd probably need half as many solar panels as the ones you see on the ISS but that's just for climate control. You'd need lots to provide the energy to gather the water, break it up, etc. (breaking water is a pretty energy-intensive process).
Certainly it's all doable, though I would be remiss if I said I saw it happening within the next several decades.
Battery technology is more than prepared. We have satellites drifting out of the solar system that were launched in the 70's that won't have to power down 'til another 15 years from now.
The moon only passes through the earth's shadow once or twice a year for a few hours - I don't think that planning around reduced solar power during any situation other than the two weeks of every lunar cycle that a base will spend pointed away from the sun will be necessary.
Feel free to add me on whatever network, it's always more fun to play with people than alone
I think preventing meteors from tearing shit up and turning into moon dust is going to be a bigger issue than the dust itself.
We've got enough methods of airblasting that shit away before it even gets into the habitations. Not terribly pleasant methods but it can be done.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It should be noted that these are not powered by batteries, but by (relatively) small thermal cells that draw energy from radioactive materials. These are great for providing long-term power but they don't produce very much.
Two weeks of power is a whole lot to store up to run heat, lights, life support and all the rest of the equipment. That's a lot for batteries alone.
I wonder what would be harder: getting a reliable battery system to run for the full 14 days or setting up an elaborate system where power is collected in space/halfway across the satellite.
I'd be worried that it'd start out as an American military base (though a military base at all could be bad).
Don't really know enough to say.
Face Twit Rav Gram
We had that technology then, is what I'm saying; we're 40 years beyond that, I'm fairly sure we've had a plentiful amount of breakthroughs.