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.
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.
Oh, I know, I'm just saying lunar eclipses (or solar eclipses as the case would be from the moon) will not be a situation that's going to come up very often.
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
It's also good not to forget that most places on the moon, you are going to need really good batteries(like ones that will supply power for 15 days) if you are going just by solar power. It's not insurmountable, but it's not day every half hour or so either. It would kinda be a bit of an issue, unless you were to use satellites to gather energy and beam it down.
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.
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.
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.
We have. Just not in a way that helps. There haven't been many advances in nuclear batteries, which are pretty much dead end in that they don't scale well. But short-term batteries, shit like lithium polymer and upcoming Silver-oxide batteries are massively better than the best of 40 years ago.
Power supplies are still the Achilles heel of earth technology.
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It's also good not to forget that most places on the moon, you are going to need really good batteries(like ones that will supply power for 15 days) if you are going just by solar power. It's not insurmountable, but it's not day every half hour or so either. It would kinda be a bit of an issue, unless you were to use satellites to gather energy and beam it down.
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.
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.
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.
We have. Just not in a way that helps. There haven't been many advances in nuclear batteries, which are pretty much dead end in that they don't scale well. But short-term batteries, shit like lithium polymer and upcoming Silver-oxide batteries are massively better than the best of 40 years ago.
Power supplies are still the Achilles heel of earth technology.
Crazy thought: what's the possibility that the water on the Moon is heavy water, and as such a decent source of deuterium and tritium? Once we get cold fusion going, we'll be quids in.
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
edited November 2009
A nuclear powerplant on the moon? Wouldn't it be better to have several solar panel stations around the moon, all wired into the same location where whatever man-made facility is?
It's also good not to forget that most places on the moon, you are going to need really good batteries(like ones that will supply power for 15 days) if you are going just by solar power. It's not insurmountable, but it's not day every half hour or so either. It would kinda be a bit of an issue, unless you were to use satellites to gather energy and beam it down.
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.
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.
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.
We have. Just not in a way that helps. There haven't been many advances in nuclear batteries, which are pretty much dead end in that they don't scale well. But short-term batteries, shit like lithium polymer and upcoming Silver-oxide batteries are massively better than the best of 40 years ago.
Power supplies are still the Achilles heel of earth technology.
Crazy thought: what's the possibility that the water on the Moon is heavy water, and as such a decent source of deuterium and tritium? Once we get cold fusion going, we'll be quids in.
I'd like to know what the isotope ratios are in that water actually. Does it get transmuted by solar radiation or what?
What I'm thinking is that wouldn't this water be a finite resource? If we go up there and base our entire colonization efforts on these deposits, won't they dry up really quick?
What I'm thinking is that wouldn't this water be a finite resource? If we go up there and base our entire colonization efforts on these deposits, won't they dry up really quick?
Well, water can be recycled unless we're getting it off the moon via fuel usage.
Besides, you don't need to only use the surface stuff - the idea is it lets you bootstrap colonization. For example, with that water we can land a team who can then do core drilling and figure out if there's anything substantial under the surface for example.
It's also good not to forget that most places on the moon, you are going to need really good batteries(like ones that will supply power for 15 days) if you are going just by solar power. It's not insurmountable, but it's not day every half hour or so either. It would kinda be a bit of an issue, unless you were to use satellites to gather energy and beam it down.
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.
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.
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.
We have. Just not in a way that helps. There haven't been many advances in nuclear batteries, which are pretty much dead end in that they don't scale well. But short-term batteries, shit like lithium polymer and upcoming Silver-oxide batteries are massively better than the best of 40 years ago.
Power supplies are still the Achilles heel of earth technology.
Crazy thought: what's the possibility that the water on the Moon is heavy water, and as such a decent source of deuterium and tritium? Once we get cold fusion going, we'll be quids in.
You are joking about the cold fusion, right?
The solar wind is nearly all protons and electrons so if anything there would be more light isotopes, unless there's something I'm not thinking of here.
We also have tons and TONS of the heavy water crap here on Earth already.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is - why do we want to colonise the moon: a rock floating in the sky with no air and that gets hit by chunks of rock every so often? That's worse than building a house on top of an active volcano or a geyser..
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HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
We also have tons and TONS of the heavy water crap here on Earth already.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is - why do we want to colonise the moon: a rock floating in the sky with no air and that gets hit by chunks of rock every so often? That's worse than building a house on top of an active volcano or a geyser..
I don't think immediate colonization is a plan. More than anything it'd be a facility for space programs.
We also have tons and TONS of the heavy water crap here on Earth already.
Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is - why do we want to colonise the moon: a rock floating in the sky with no air and that gets hit by chunks of rock every so often? That's worse than building a house on top of an active volcano or a geyser..
Because it's a pretty good stepping stone to the wider solar system.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
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Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
I guess. It's kind of a dead rock, though, so it's not like there will be a great diversity of potential studies (which could not just as easily be done in Earth orbit).
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
Tourism.
I would pay obscene amounts of money to fly to the moon.
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Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
This has already been answered. Science + materials.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
I guess. It's kind of a dead rock, though, so it's not like there will be a great diversity of potential studies (which could not just as easily be done in Earth orbit).
Figuring out how to reliably extract Helium-3 and transport it back to Earth would be a huge boon. 25 tons of it could supply Earth with its entire energy needs for a year, and there's an estimated million tons on the moon.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
edit: besides, all the pretty things are on Earth, the other planets are just glorified frozen/molten rocks or big balls of gas.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
Yeah. And exploring the New World was dumb, too. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit on a boat for three months just to explore entirely new vistas rife with unimagined possibilities? Stupid Europeans. They should've just waited until we had Concordes. Anything you can't get to in under ten hours isn't worth the trip, I say.
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Science for science's sake is great.
Or in this case, who cares what the practical applications of a Moon base are.
Its a god damn moon base
Seriously. I just don't get opposition to this outside of, perhaps, the financial one. Which is why it sucks that we still have war. If our +Europe, Russia, China, &c. defense budgets were directed at space exploration thanks to some hippie utopian peace thing imagine where we'd be by now.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
Yeah. And exploring the New World was dumb, too. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit on a boat for three months just to explore entirely new vistas rife with unimagined possibilities? Stupid Europeans. They should've just waited until we had Concordes. Anything you can't get to in under ten hours isn't worth the trip, I say.
Yeah, if we equate space and ocean exploration, we're in about the 1400's.
Isn't one of the big reasons for the ISS to conduct experiments in microgravity? The moon may not have much gravity by Earth's standards, but it's still enough to make a big difference, I would think. So I'm not sure a moon base could entirely replace having a space station so much as supplement it.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
Yeah. And exploring the New World was dumb, too. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit on a boat for three months just to explore entirely new vistas rife with unimagined possibilities? Stupid Europeans. They should've just waited until we had Concordes. Anything you can't get to in under ten hours isn't worth the trip, I say.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
People thought Columbus was literally going to fall off the edge of the planet and die. Thousands upon thousands of explorers died due to new and exotic diseases in the "new world". You don't go from "hey we got out of earth's gravity" to "Head straight for Alpha Centauri" in one step. You gradually go further, developing the technology that enables you to go further.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
The moon is several thousand years of dedicated travel away? Then how did Buzz Aldrin manage to do this not that long ago?
Aren't a lot of our current technological conveniences the direct result of the space program?
I mean just sciencing for the sake of science does sometimes produce tangible things, if we don't ever push the boundary it isn't going to move on its own.
Aren't a lot of our current technological conveniences the direct result of the space program?
I mean just sciencing for the sake of science does sometimes produce tangible things, if we don't ever push the boundary it isn't going to move on its own.
NASA and DARPA are responsible for a hell of a lot of random crap that we now can't live without.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
The moon is several thousand years of dedicated travel away? Then how did Buzz Aldrin manage to do this not that long ago?
Nearest star is several thousand years of dedicated travel away. We all know the moon is such a valuable resource like the Americas were - all the countries of the world are scrambling for their slice.
Oh wait, they're not. Cause it's a large rock.
@matthasaproblem: Some people thought Columbus was gonna die - he obviously didn't cause he was expecting to hit India. My assumption that it'll take real fucking long to get to places in space is quite true and with a fairly large amount of evidence to prove it. People thought the world was flat cause religion told them to.
I'm not saying that various space programmes don't contribute with a lot of neat inventions - they have, and it's pretty damn cool and lots of science should be done for science's sake cause you get cool shit outta that. We shouldn't on the other hand be all "omg other planets that'll be oh so exciting and marvellous, or to visit another star!"
I'm just saying I'm not a romantic when it comes to space travel. Also, I just realised - it'd be real fucking funny if we could never get to the closest star cause by the time we got there our bodies would've deteriorated to such a degree (from lack of gravity) that we'd die as soon as we got close to a planet.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
People thought Columbus was literally going to fall off the edge of the planet and die. Thousands upon thousands of explorers died due to new and exotic diseases in the "new world". You don't go from "hey we got out of earth's gravity" to "Head straight for Alpha Centauri" in one step. You gradually go further, developing the technology that enables you to go further.
Completely off topic, but no one other than uneducated peasants maybe would have thought that Colombus was going to fall off the edge of the Earth. They thought he would run out of supplies long before reaching China based on the rather accurate circumference calculated by the Greeks. No one really counted on there being another different continent in between the two.
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Donkey KongPutting Nintendo out of business with AI nipsRegistered Userregular
Aren't a lot of our current technological conveniences the direct result of the space program?
I mean just sciencing for the sake of science does sometimes produce tangible things, if we don't ever push the boundary it isn't going to move on its own.
There are plenty of good scientific reasons to build a moon base. The biggest non-scientific reason is that politicians hate funding open-ended research but will pour billions into anything with a clear objective and popular support.
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Oh, I know, I'm just saying lunar eclipses (or solar eclipses as the case would be from the moon) will not be a situation that's going to come up very often.
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We have. Just not in a way that helps. There haven't been many advances in nuclear batteries, which are pretty much dead end in that they don't scale well. But short-term batteries, shit like lithium polymer and upcoming Silver-oxide batteries are massively better than the best of 40 years ago.
Power supplies are still the Achilles heel of earth technology.
God, imagine this happening during the space race. The world would be a very different place today.
Crazy thought: what's the possibility that the water on the Moon is heavy water, and as such a decent source of deuterium and tritium? Once we get cold fusion going, we'll be quids in.
I'd like to know what the isotope ratios are in that water actually. Does it get transmuted by solar radiation or what?
Well, water can be recycled unless we're getting it off the moon via fuel usage.
Besides, you don't need to only use the surface stuff - the idea is it lets you bootstrap colonization. For example, with that water we can land a team who can then do core drilling and figure out if there's anything substantial under the surface for example.
You are joking about the cold fusion, right?
The solar wind is nearly all protons and electrons so if anything there would be more light isotopes, unless there's something I'm not thinking of here.
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Honestly, I don't see what the big deal is - why do we want to colonise the moon: a rock floating in the sky with no air and that gets hit by chunks of rock every so often? That's worse than building a house on top of an active volcano or a geyser..
I don't think immediate colonization is a plan. More than anything it'd be a facility for space programs.
Because it's a pretty good stepping stone to the wider solar system.
Somebody also enlighten me as to what real benefits we could gain from colonizing the moon? It's greatest value, as far as I can tell, is providing a better jumping-off point for missions to other planets.
We'd be able to learn a lot more about it if we were actually living on it. Science for science's sake isn't a horrible thing.
I'm not sure there's any non-science use for it right now.
Tourism.
I guess. It's kind of a dead rock, though, so it's not like there will be a great diversity of potential studies (which could not just as easily be done in Earth orbit).
I would pay obscene amounts of money to fly to the moon.
...how is that not beneficial enough?
Cause the other planets are uninhapitable anyway and it'd be a pointless exercise to go there?
This has already been answered. Science + materials.
You believe that we are eternally tied to this particular rock, in perpetuity until it gets swallowed by the sun, and that any attempt to step out into the wider void is a pointless exercise?
That's just sad.
Yes, I imagine that the majority of the human race will be stuck on Earth for the rest of its life and that "stepping out into the wider void" is suicidal and at best a very slow, boring and ultimately pointless exercise.
That is unless we get reliable (or any kind really) FTL which would be fucking awesome - but I'm not counting on it and space travel will be incredibly fucking boring without it.
edit: besides, all the pretty things are on Earth, the other planets are just glorified frozen/molten rocks or big balls of gas.
There's lots of it on the moon. It's used for nuclear fusion research.
Long story short: it's for fusion power, and it's on the moon because the solar wind hits the moon and it gets stuck there.
Yeah. And exploring the New World was dumb, too. I mean, who the fuck wants to sit on a boat for three months just to explore entirely new vistas rife with unimagined possibilities? Stupid Europeans. They should've just waited until we had Concordes. Anything you can't get to in under ten hours isn't worth the trip, I say.
Or in this case, who cares what the practical applications of a Moon base are.
Its a god damn moon base
Seriously. I just don't get opposition to this outside of, perhaps, the financial one. Which is why it sucks that we still have war. If our +Europe, Russia, China, &c. defense budgets were directed at space exploration thanks to some hippie utopian peace thing imagine where we'd be by now.
At least they could reliably say they'd be able to breath air during the entire trip. Honestly, the comparison isn't valid at all. Exploring the domain your species has evolved and adapted to be able to travel and live in is utterly different to going into a whole bunch of nothing with small dots of debatable interest.
3 months is also quite different from spending several thousand years travelling to the closest star (or 100 or whatever it is, it's a long fucking time and you would be dead and your corpse recycled by the time you got anywhere close).
Also, say we colonised another solar system - woop ti do, we'll be having four year delayed conversations. We wouldn't be colonising - it'd be seeding with little to no value return.
The moon is several thousand years of dedicated travel away? Then how did Buzz Aldrin manage to do this not that long ago?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOo6aHSY8hU
I mean just sciencing for the sake of science does sometimes produce tangible things, if we don't ever push the boundary it isn't going to move on its own.
NASA and DARPA are responsible for a hell of a lot of random crap that we now can't live without.
Nearest star is several thousand years of dedicated travel away. We all know the moon is such a valuable resource like the Americas were - all the countries of the world are scrambling for their slice.
Oh wait, they're not. Cause it's a large rock.
@matthasaproblem: Some people thought Columbus was gonna die - he obviously didn't cause he was expecting to hit India. My assumption that it'll take real fucking long to get to places in space is quite true and with a fairly large amount of evidence to prove it. People thought the world was flat cause religion told them to.
I'm not saying that various space programmes don't contribute with a lot of neat inventions - they have, and it's pretty damn cool and lots of science should be done for science's sake cause you get cool shit outta that. We shouldn't on the other hand be all "omg other planets that'll be oh so exciting and marvellous, or to visit another star!"
I'm just saying I'm not a romantic when it comes to space travel. Also, I just realised - it'd be real fucking funny if we could never get to the closest star cause by the time we got there our bodies would've deteriorated to such a degree (from lack of gravity) that we'd die as soon as we got close to a planet.
Completely off topic, but no one other than uneducated peasants maybe would have thought that Colombus was going to fall off the edge of the Earth. They thought he would run out of supplies long before reaching China based on the rather accurate circumference calculated by the Greeks. No one really counted on there being another different continent in between the two.
There are plenty of good scientific reasons to build a moon base. The biggest non-scientific reason is that politicians hate funding open-ended research but will pour billions into anything with a clear objective and popular support.