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We went to the moon to show military might, and beat the USSR. Having done so, no interest in more? We've never been back since. A moonbase is the obvious pl
by anexprogrammer 11y ago
We went to the moon to show military might, and beat the USSR. Having done so, no interest in more?
We've never been back since. A moonbase is the obvious place to experiment, develop and benefit from 1/6th gravity as a staging post to Mars. We should have been there for the last 40 years.
It saddens me we're so short sighted. No votes in it?
Could we even organise a global effort? The governments would spend decades arguing over who got to make which bit.
I'm much more hopeful of the private efforts to be truthful.
- danielweber 11y agoThere is no need to use the Moon as a "staging post" for Mars. There are things that make the Moon interesting, but none of them are Mars.
- anexprogrammer 11y agoLast thing I remember reading from NASA about manned mars exploration was via a space station in lunar orbit and associated moonbase. It wasn't that long ago but maybe they found preferred methods.
- tjl 11y agoA space station at one of the Lagrange points is likely. If one wanted to do a space station near the moon, L1 and L2 would work. L1 is on the Earth side while L2 is on the dark side of the moon. L4 and L5 have long been proposed for long-term space stations.
- danielweber 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Design_Reference_Mission#Design_Reference_Architecture_5.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Design_Reference_Mission#... Mars DRM 5.0 is still for direct launch, but they keep on talking about side projects as being essential to Mars because mumble.