What do you think of returning to the moon?

rustyplanet · 2003-07-14 19:57:01

I've been reading a lot about it, and the June issue of Astronomy had a whole thing dedicated to returning to the moon. What are your thoughts about going back to the moon? I think we should set up some kind of presence on the moon now since Mars probably won't happen until ~2030. Also, the poles almost certainly have ice from all the asteroids, and I believe there is good reason to put an observatory on the far side.

Free Spirit · 2003-07-14 22:53:51

Considering the cost overruns that plague the ISS, and the political idiocy that often dictates its goals, I'm wary of how useful a moonbase would ultimately be. Will it end up like the ISS, just some half-assed, overpriced pile of cans that fails to do serious science and only keeps a handful of people around to make sure the hinges don't squeak? I've turned into a real cynic when it comes to government manned space programs.

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-15 12:59:09

only if boatloads of profit can be made. Nuff said. . .damn-fool scientests probably will not be able to convince anyone to do it for them. besides, the origianal mission had science as a back-burner thought, at least in the first few missions. . . .

clark · 2003-07-15 13:46:42

We will return to the moon before we go to Mars.

The Moon can do far more for Earth, more immediately, than Mars ever can.

ISS will be complete in a year or two. China will be in space by then. ESA will have achieved independant human launch by then.

The Space Race is about to start.

Josh Cryer · 2003-07-15 17:34:30

Venus is more appealing than either! No one cares about it, and doesn't see its potential!

RobS · 2003-07-16 01:50:06

As much as I love Mars, I think we should go back to the moon first. Much of the equipment needed for Mars will also work on the moon, such as buried habitats and pressurized rovers. Lunar ice can cut the cost of launching stuff to Mars to a half or even a third because hydrogen-oxygen fuel made on the moon should be cheaper than making it on the Earth and lifting it to low earth orbit. It takes about a quarter as much energy to get water to low earth orbit from the lunar surface than from the earth' surface if you use aerobraking. The moon will also be covered with chunks of Mars. For that matter, it'll have chunks of ancient Earth on it and may even have chunks of Venus (blasted into space by meteorites). The moon will be profitable via space tourism and helium-3 manufacture at lot sooner than Mars will.

-- RobS

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-16 06:23:22

The Space Race is about to start.

I hope you are right!!

The moon will be profitable via space tourism and helium-3 manufacture at lot sooner than Mars will.

Not likely, since the mining of helium-3 requires a great deal of infrastructure. There are only light metals availble at the surface of the moon to make a infrastructure, but heaveir metals are required for some parts of it. Mining the near-earth asteroids will come first, then moon, then mars. mars could have a small colony for scientific research before any of this starts, but it probably won't recieve the bounty of industrialization before the moon and near-earth asteroids. Asteroids are first b/c it is easier to get to them then to get to the moon.

Gennaro · 2003-07-17 07:17:31

This is the way I think about it.

The way to go back to the Moon to stay must be economically driven. In the words of prometheusunbound: "only if boatloads of profit can be made" and more so industrially than as a tourist attraction (I think the idea of space tourism is hyped beyond reason, luxury hotels on the Moon are nice as a novelty, but can in no way sustain a serious expansionist effort).

The Moon instead has an important role in getting easily extractable, cheap materials to build space stations and solar power satellites. The space station in turn works like a transportation relay (or hub) between the sub orbital environment and interplanetary space, asteroidal mines and Terra as well as Luna, Terra and interplanetary space. Therefore a moonbase will precede the construction of serious toroidal space stations - artificial gravity providing contraptions of classical sci-fi that will dwarf the ISS shacks by any measure.

Near Earth transport technology will rely on some sort of NTR, probably a Timberwind derivative and maybe "steam rockets" for space only bulk freights. Fully reusable spacecraft will transport rare heavy minerals from asteroids to Earth for a multitude of industrial applications, for example Platinum, which is used in fuel cells, which in turn are charged through electrolysis, energy for which is provided by fission nuclear plants and hey - solar power satellites.
Second generation space transport would include light craft for transgravity well transportation, riding on energy beams converted and fuelled directly from space and concievably Helium-3 extraction on the Moon for interplanetary travel.

As for observatories on the far side, I wonder if not space telescope arrays at Lagrange points actually are more practical and simple, but I'm no expert.

Gennaro · 2003-07-17 08:04:53

ISS will be complete in a year or two. China will be in space by then. ESA will have achieved independant human launch by then.
The Space Race is about to start.

I hope so too. This is the way we humans do things, by competition between tribes to which we adhere individually. In my optimistic, yet I like to think so, perfectly viable and realistic view of tomorrow, the world is dominated by four super powers instead of only one hyper power: the US, the EU, Russia and China as well as a few minor majors: Korea (reunited of course), Japan, Taiwan and India. That is if the Pacific nations won't found a confederation of their own to meet the rising Chinese might!

RobertDyck · 2003-07-17 08:20:27

I think you're right, Gennaro; the moon will only be colonised if "boatloads of profit can be made". However, I do have a few comments about the details.

Many Moon advocates like to go on about helium-3. However, nuclear fusion power generation using helium-3 has never been developed. Furthermore, I believe that when fusion is developed the fuel mixture will be pure deuterium. A double deuterium reaction produces tritium and helium-3 as by-products. Deuterium/tritium and deuterium/helium-3 fuel mixtures are both richer fuel than pure double-deuterium, so the by-products will be recycled into the reactor. But it is much easier to start with a double deuterium reaction and recycle its by-products than mine helium-3 from the Moon. Deuterium can be extracted from any water source on Earth, so there is no need to go to the Moon for fusion fuel.

A cheap source of materials to build space stations and other space assets? Definitely, that's one of the Moon's primary assets.

Space telescopes at Lagrange points? That misses the advantages of the bulk of the Moon shielding the telescope from radio interference from Earth, and the solid base to mount it. There is little benefit to launching a space telescope to a LaGrange point vs. low Earth orbit. One LaGrange point on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun can use the Earth to shield the telescope from solar radio interference and heat from sunlight. Infrared telescopes must be very cold to prevent IR from the telescope itself interfering with the observation. However, the LaGrange point is beyond the umbra, it's just in the penumbra, which means there is still some sunlight that reaches that point in space. Furthermore, radio interference (static) from the Sun is insignificant compared to radio signals from Earth. If a space telescope is sent into orbit at all, it might as well be LEO where it can be serviced.

An interferometry telescope is the only one that can directly observe planets around other stars. Since they use interference to cancel the light from the star in order to observe planets orbiting that star, the telescope must have no vibration. The telescopes in the array must also be calibrated to a fraction of a wavelength of light between them. Maintaining separation between telescopes to within less than a single wavelength of light, and reducing vibration to significantly less than a wavelength of light, is very difficult for any orbiting telescope. NASA still hasn't figured out how to do it. It is very easy to achieve this if you bolt the telescopes to a solid base and make that base very heavy (tens of tonnes) to absorb any vibration. That is easy to do on Earth, but interference from the atmosphere prevents observing extra-solar planets. It would be easy to build an interferometry telescope on the Moon; the question is how to get there.

Gennaro · 2003-07-17 10:22:50

Thanks for interesting remarks.

Guess they don't tell you about the real problems or limitations when you read articles like this:

http://www.esa.int/export/esaSC/120382_index_0_m.html

My impression was that L2 was at least as good as the far side of the Moon for an interferometry telescope, but what do you know.

Very interesting about producing Helium-3 from Deuterium. So why hasn't this hit the mainstream, might people be afraid of losing their favourite reason to build Lunar settlements?

Helium-3, of course is a fusion fuel and a breakthrough for fusion power seems to be ever delayed. For how long has it been researched now? Fifty years?
With advancements in fission safety aspects and solar power from geosynchronous orbit made possible because of fission propulsion technology, who knows, maybe we'll happen to pass it by all together, at least as an energy source on Earth?

Bill White · 2003-07-17 10:56:27

An interferometry telescope is the only one that can directly observe planets around other stars.

Robert, any benefit to two telescopes, one on Mars and the other on the Moon or LEO?

RobertDyck · 2003-07-17 12:47:18

An interferometry telescope is the only one that can directly observe planets around other stars.
Robert, any benefit to two telescopes, one on Mars and the other on the Moon or LEO?

Two widely separated telescopes could be used for parallax, to get precise distance to a star. However, if you're patient you can just use a single telescope in LEO and wait 6 months for Earth to be on the opposite side of the Sun. Then the baseline to triangulate is the diameter of Earth's orbit. That's how astronomers do it now. Conceivably, you could use two widely separated telescopes for instantaneous observation and use synthetic aperture to combine the signals. This is done today with radio telescopes. Synthetic aperture can give you a result almost as good as a dish with diameter as great as the separation between the two observatories. It isn't quite as good as a single dish that big, but two observatories separated by almost the diameter of the Earth give you synthetic aperture that large. It's more difficult to do with optical telescopes, but there are some astronomers are working on exactly that. One observatory on Mars and the other in LEO? That would give synthetic aperture as large as the distance between the planets. You would have to precisely coordinate the observations to use exactly the same image sensors, same data collection rate, and samples taken at the same time. Precise timing would require very accurate clocks, but the result would be a kick-ass aperture.

RobertDyck · 2003-07-17 13:00:31

Oh, by the way, new fuel cells use proton transport membrane, also known as proton exchange membrane. This uses a thin plastic membrane instead of platinum. The solid blocks on either side of the membrane are graphite. Platinum can be used as a catalyst for many different chemical reactions, but the new PEM fuel cells are lighter, produce more electricity for the same amount of fuel, and don't use platinum or other expensive metals. There are a lot of other materials on the Moon, such as iron, aluminum, silicon, and oxygen. There are also deposits of titanium. Since everything is an oxide, the most abundant element on the Moon is actually oxygen.

Bill White · 2003-07-17 13:22:45

An interferometry telescope is the only one that can directly observe planets around other stars.
Robert, any benefit to two telescopes, one on Mars and the other on the Moon or LEO?

I just thought of this. . .

Would a Marsian telescope working in close coordination with a lunar or LEO or even a Terran telescope be well situated to catalog rogue asteroids?

Isn't it true that its really hard to see an asteroid coming right at you?

What about a rather modest telescope being sent to low Mars orbit (a mini-Hubble or the Hubble itself after its retirement) and task it to work with Terran observers to map every asteroid from the Sun to the Main Belt?

Worthwhile?

RobertDyck · 2003-07-17 14:11:14

Would a Marsian telescope working in close coordination with a lunar or LEO or even a Terran telescope be well situated to catalog rogue asteroids?
Isn't it true that its really hard to see an asteroid coming right at you?
What about a rather modest telescope being sent to low Mars orbit (a mini-Hubble or the Hubble itself after its retirement) and task it to work with Terran observers to map every asteroid from the Sun to the Main Belt?

Sounds like a good idea. Parallax for any asteroid in the inner solar system will be very significant between Earth and Mars situated telescopes. The asteroids would appear to be in quite different locations in the sky, so a comparison between images will show immediately. Of course the problem is moving Hubble to Mars. That isn't a small telescope; it's as big as the cargo bay of the Shuttle. That was on purpose, it's the biggest it can be and still deliverable by the Shuttle. Moving something that heavy into trans-Mars trajectory would take a big booster and aerocapturing something that big would require a big heat shield. Using propellant to capture something that big would take even more fuel, so aerocapture would require less mass to LEO. The bottom line is that Hubble is just plain big. However, searching for asteroids does not require a telescope that sensitive. A smaller telescope would do the job. After all, you only need to detect the asteroid. You only need a telescope that will image an asteroid of dangerous size as a spot of light; surface detail isn't necessary. Imaging it could be done by Hubble or its successor after the asteroid has been located. If you use computer image comparison between Earth and Mars located telescopes, you really want two identical telescopes dedicated to that task. That means a small, inexpensive space telescope in LEO to work with the Mars orbit telescope. It would be easier to convince the budget guys to pay for it if the price is relatively low, so think small. The image of Earth from the Mars Orbit Camera (MOC) on Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was pretty good. Could we get away with a telescope roughly that size? NASA already has the ability to send something that big to Mars.

Gennaro · 2003-07-17 14:18:36

Oh, by the way, new fuel cells use proton transport membrane, also known as proton exchange membrane. This uses a thin plastic membrane instead of platinum.

Too bad...

But I reckon there are a lot of other products and resources that will meet wide demand.

Only mentioned Platinum for fuel cells because it was an application I was aware about right out of hand (was even a bit proud of having figured it out all on my own).

We need to have staple goods upon which prices can be pressed downwards in order to perpetuate demand and thus the need to access space.

RobertDyck · 2003-07-17 16:43:35

Gold is a conductor that is used to plate contacts for electronic devices, especially computer boards. This is one reason to recycle your old computer boards, don't throw them away; they have a small amount of gold. There are a few companies melting down old computer boards for their gold. Reduced prices and increased supply of gold will support the electronics industry, including personal computers, CD players (portable and home stereo systems), portable MP3 players, home theatre systems, etc.

Silver oxide is an excellent reusable sorbent to remove CO2 from breathing air. Lithium hydroxide (LiOH) was used on Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, and the Space Shuttle. The problem with LiOH is that you can't reuse it; it's a consumable. Silver oxide sheets are being used for space suits on ISS. Silver oxide is heavier than LiOH, but you can bake-out the CO2. You can use solid amines instead of silver oxide, but that is usually coated on styrofoam beads. It is relatively light-weight but occupies a large volume; fine for a space station or space shuttle, but too bulky for a spacesuit. This will be a new market for silver.

Metal asteroids consist primarily of iron and nickel, but also have significant quantities of precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, osmium, and ruthenium. There is literally gold in them thar asteroids. And the best place from which to supply an asteroid mining operation is?

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-18 08:49:15

I just thought of this. . .
Would a Marsian telescope working in close coordination with a lunar or LEO or even a Terran telescope be well situated to catalog rogue asteroids?
Isn't it true that its really hard to see an asteroid coming right at you?
What about a rather modest telescope being sent to low Mars orbit (a mini-Hubble or the Hubble itself after its retirement) and task it to work with Terran observers to map every asteroid from the Sun to the Main Belt?
Worthwhile?

A radar array would be better for this sort of thing. radar would bounce off the asteroid and come back to the array. Unfortantly I don't know if there are any radar arrrays that can go that far. I think the radar arrays on earth are limited by the electomagnetic field, but theoractally at least in area without nonmagnetic fields radars' range would be infinate. I don't know if the moon has a magnetic field, but the last I checked, mars did not have one.

Don't confuse this with radar telescopes that only recieve radar energy from the stars.

concern here-would radar arrays interfere greatly with radar telescopes?

Remember-an asteroid collosion with earth could occur sooner or later. do we need to do this sooner or later?

Metal asteroids consist primarily of iron and nickel, but also have significant quantities of precious metals: gold, silver, platinum, palladium, iridium, rhodium, osmium, and ruthenium. There is literally gold in them thar asteroids. And the best place from which to supply an asteroid mining operation is?

I know the near earth asteroids are the easiest place in the solar system to reach, easier than even the moon. I suggest we go after the NEAR earth asteroids after finding out were they are with radar arrays and put a few in geosynchus (did I spell that right?) orbit around earth and start a private company to mine them. NASA could get the first asteroid, and sell sections of it (solving the property problem in space in one swift stroke) to any interested buyers. then the companies, after growing considerably with the infusion of profit, could go and get their own asteroids (ones that NASA marked out as being rich in materials they want) and continue the cycle untill everyone concerned is filthy rich and hauling boatloads of profit in. For a more comprehensive arguement go to click me to see how I and why I think this should be done.
perhaps we are deviating from the topic, no? maybe it is my imagination but we are sounding like venture capatilists. LONG LIVE CAPITALISM. . . .heh heh.
-nate-

dicktice · 2003-07-19 09:59:50

Why not, if you desire to utilize the Hubble for asteroid detection inside Earth's orbit--after its retirement--simply boost it to escape velocity and allow it to orbit the Sun on its own. I don't understand this fixation with Mars-capture, etc, when you'd still be able to know exactly where it was located, any time you needed to make use of it in conjunction with any other telescope(s). Isn't that right? (Much better than going to the expense and risk of bringing it back for exhibition--or worse, de-orbiting it and just letting it burn up on reentry.)

prometheusunbound · 2003-07-19 10:25:15

Why not, if you desire to utilize the Hubble for asteroid detection inside Earth's orbit--after its retirement--simply boost it to escape velocity

The hubble is only a opical telescope, it can't really see asteroids unless they reflect a lot of light, which most don't in any case. Radar telescopes are better. Why bother with increasing the orbit? It can see perfectly fine where it is now.

Hubble instruments This site explains what is on the hubble.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-04-01 13:58:23

a thread from over 2 decades ago, thinking mankind will be on Mars by 2030

some news

Lessons from the first CLPS lunar landing missions

https://thespacereview.com/article/4765/1

flight controllers at Intuitive Machines put the lander, known as Odysseus or “Odie,” into a mode so that, when sunlight returned to the lander in a few weeks, it could wake up and start transmitting—if it managed to survive bitterly cold conditions.

“Odie’s power system would not complete another call home,” the company announced on social media. “This confirms that Odie has permanently faded after cementing its legacy into history as the first commercial lunar lander to land on the Moon.”

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2024-04-01 14:00:09)

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