You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
This whole idea seems very backwards to me when taking into concern the ultimate goal of expanding space exploration. Why spend the massive amounts of money on creating a sea colony that will be largely impossible to create much profit, when the same money could be spent on creating a lunar outpost which could in all possibility be just as profitable, if not more profitable (especially with the expansion of the space tourism industry). That seems like a much better first step into space than any sea colony. And that would get us much closer to Mars....
Online registration for Marsweek just went up. You can register now on the webpage shown in the previous post. I encourage all to attend, this is going to be the cheapest conference I have found with a great selection of pretty high-profile speakers.
It is completely student run so it may lack a bit of the large professional conference luster, but it will not lack in quality.
-Joshua.
Question 1 - What evidence do you have that private enterprise can expect a reasonable return on investment by going to the Moon?
I know all about the wonders of He-3. But, until we have fusion reactors, Helium 3 has little market potential, IMHO. And, fusion reactors have been "20 years away" for the last 30 years.
Other mining operations - if profitable - would be going on already. NASA does not have a monopoly on the lift capabilities needed to arrive at the Moon. If there was money to be made on the Moon, someone would be doing it today, again IMHO.
Question 2 - By aiming our sights only on the Moon, might we be delaying or deferring going into the solar system by many many decades or even centuries? If space advocacy energy is tapped for a series of lunar missions and if we acknowledge being satisfied with the Moon, well, when for Mars and the rest of the solar system?
I believe we need to aim higher than the Moon if we ever wish to go higher than the Moon.
Question 3 - Do you believe a lunar settlement would be more or less "self sufficient" than a Mars settlement? Neither, IMHO, can expect total self-sufficiency however I believe a Mars settlement will be more self sufficient and therefore a truer measure of humanity's spacefaring capability.
Question 4 - What is your opinion of a definition of "spacefaring species" I have offered before - A spacefaring species is defined by their ability to give birth to healthy children and raise those children into healthy adults entirely away from the planet of origin.
In other words, until children are born "out there" we are not a spacefaring species. 3/8 gravity *may* be a show stopper for kids but 1/6 gravity is so much closer to microgravity that I believe the prospects for healthy lunar born children is far far worse.
In Answer to questions posted by Bill White....
Question 1: Private enterprize will not come easily on the moon. However, there have been many studies done on this topic (I will try to hunt some of them up again). I am a student at MIT currently and a professor here (David Miller) did a study on Water/Oxygen extraction on the moon, and found that extracting Oxygen or water on the moon would not be economically feasible unless being used directly on the Moon (not being taken off). Another poll/study that I read (I forget where from, but it was some consultant agency) polled ~500 people about space tourism info. They found that there was a high interest and market for space tourism including stay's on the moon. In some of the ASME Space conference books there were business models of Lunar vacation hotels etc. This seems to be the best business plan for making money from the moon right now. There is also the option for mining of other materials (metals etc.) For this type of mining to be economical there must be rare Earth metals in significantly high concentrations. As you mentioned there is He-3 which is used in Fusion... which is not possible yet. There has also been talk of mining Platinum (rare on earth, but very useful). The problem with making a business model for mining on the moon is that there is not enough data about the composition of the moon (are there any ores, what materials are concentrated where? ... etc...).
Question 2: We should never be satisfied with the moon, or accept where we are in space exploration. And I don't think that we ever will. It seems like the moon is a simpler next step in the exploration game plan, not an end goal.
Question 3: I do not believe that a lunar base will be more self sufficient than a martian outpost. Yet, I also do not think that it will be significantly less self-sufficient. The Moon has many resources as well as Mars. The only resource that comes to mind that is on Mars that is not on the moon (correct me if I'm wrong in this) is Carbon, and to some extent Hydrogen (unless water at the lunar poles is confirmed). The Lack of Carbon and Hydrogen causes the lunar base to need more re-supplying from the Earth than Mars. I have researched the number for this before and will look them up again in a bit to see exactly how much more these resupplies would cost compared to any resupplies to Mars.
Question 4: I consider a spacefairing civilization to be one that has regular flights to planetary bodies (other than the home planet). I do not consider spacefairing to necessarily require colonizing other planets, although I sincerely hope that happens in the somewhat near future.
As to Mark S's comments, I agree that the possiblity of a Lunar Outpost aiding in Mars Missions seems a bit far fetched right now. I would not consider this to be one of the pros for Lunar exploration because of the added complication to such Mars Missions. Yet this still does not detract from the argument for going to the moon. I too agree that both should be done, but there will never be enough money for NASA to take on both a real Mars and Moon program. Therefore, again, because the moon will be cheaper, and simpler with less risk, I still cannot fully advocate diving into a Mars Mission at this time. Mars should still be studied and researched, but as far as exploration the moon seems more logical. I will try to find some of the reports and numbers I discussed here and post them as soon as I can.
Joshua.
I'm not sure if discussion on this topic has stopped or not. It's been a while since any post, but I wanted to input a little bit of my own thought on this. There are a few points I wanted to address:
First, the private enterprize on the moon business. This will happen, and within our lifetimes, however, it will not be done without government backing. NASA has many programs to support private businesses in their Aerospace ventures and eventually these will take off. Private industry alone worries about cost vs. Benefit (revenue). The cost of Space ventures is far too high compared to the expected payback from such ventures for any company to go it alone right now. This mix of government vs. private funds is not a bad thing at all, but I believe it is one of the best things that NASA can be doing with its money. It sparks private industry so that in the future companies will be able to go it alone, and it opens up NASA's resources to do other things because private industry takes some of the work load off of NASA's shoulders.
Second, The moon vs. Mars first debate. This is a long one. There are many ideas and statements being thrown around about which to do first. Some people say, "Oh the moon, we've been there and done that." I do not agree with this at all. We have landed on the moon, but we should definitely not consider ourselves to have "done that." As is often said, what was done on the moon was a little flag waving landing for national pride. There is so much to be learned from further exploration of the moon (of the Moon-Earth system, and of solar system exploration as a whole). So I strongly disagree with the statement that we have "done the moon." The moon is something that definitely needs to be explored and developed more, it is just a matter of when.
There was mention earlier on this thread about the Delta-V for reaching the moon to be less from Mars than from the Earth. This does not seem to matter much at all. The cost savings provided by the slight difference in the Delta-V will be completely overrun by the cost of going to Mars. So this cannot be used as an argument to go to Mars First. If we were already on Mars it could be used as an argument for how to colonize the moon, but from our current standing point, this fact does not matter so much.
Then there is the argument of using the moon as a testing bed for going to Mars. The two sides of this basically are that we either need to test on the Moon or we don't need to. Those saying that we do not need to believe that the testing done on Earth is good enough to get to Mars (at least good enough to offset the cost of testing on the moon). This argument I cannot really debate one way or another. To me it seems that it is currently mostly a matter of opinion as we have no real data to move us either way. Those wanting Mars will say the Moon is not necessary, those wanting the moon will say, if you want to go to Mars you need to test on the Moon.
The one argument that seems to really move me is the pure breakdown of costs of the different missions. I am a proponent of Solar System exploration and development as a whole and would love to see everything possible explored. Therefor, the fact that a mission to the Moon will cost several orders of magnitude less than an equivalent mission to Mars turns me strongly in favor of the moon first. Going to the moon is something that can be done under NASA's current budget, and any foreseeable budget in the future. Also the fact that private enterprize can get involved in the moon more adds to the Case for the Moon. Mars is excellent and I would love to go to Mars, but we currently do not have the money and we must admitt as well, that we do not have all the needed knowledge yet. For the Moon, we are much closer to having the money needed, and again we do not have all the know-how that we would like, but I guarentee that people will feel a lot more comfortable spending several hundred million dollars on Lunar Missions to gain the rest of the know-how than risking several Billion dollars to do so on Mars. The simple business models of such ideas lead me to push for the exploration of the Moon before the exploration of Mars.
... sorry this was so long winded, I am a big proponent of human exploration, and I see the Moon versus Mars debate almost as an obsticle to getting either done. I really wish that there could just be a uniting drive to explore... but then we wouldn't be humans.
Joshua.
I wasn't sure where exactly to post this, but I wanted to let everyone know about the MIT Mars Society's upcoming Marsweek Conference. Marsweek is dedicated to mainly to the education of university students about the exploration, development and all things Mars. However, all are welcome to attend Marsweek. This is the 4th year that Marsweek has been run at MIT and it is shaping up to be an excellent conference.
I encourage everyone interested in Mars, especially University students to check out the Marsweek webpage and consider attending the conference. It will be an excellent opportunity to meet and network with professionals and other students interested in similar ideas.
The Marsweek webpage is: http://web.mit.edu/mars/marsweek/
Pages: 1