4 ms·
I've always wondered why the US never went back to the moon. Or never set up a moon base for space exploration and experimentation. Even when countries like Ch
by smdz 9y ago
I've always wondered why the US never went back to the moon. Or never set up a moon base for space exploration and experimentation.
Even when countries like China and India are making attempts to mine the moon for Helium - why don't we hear such stories from the US? If it makes sense for China and India, it probably does make sense for US too. Or do the US elites know something much more fundamental and powerful that we might never hear of until the next world-war?
I don't like the controversy theories, especially about aliens, but I don't like the arguments against the controversy theories either. I don't know if aliens exist and even if they existed and visited us few decades back, I believe they would disregard us as a sub-Type 0 civilization (like Michio Kaku categorizes). They would have found us similar to primitives - studied us and left.
- krapp 9y ago>I've always wondered why the US never went back to the moon. Or never set up a moon base for space exploration and experimentation. The US sent half a dozen crewed missions to the moon, and made numerous unmanned missions. There's no dark secret - space travel is complex and expensive, travel to the moon vastly more so than simply to orbit, and money is governed by politics. When the US had the prestige of possibly beating the Soviets to the moon , there was the political and popular will to do so. But eventually, the trick simply got old, and no longer seemed worth the expense. Now take that, and add the exponential long term cost of a habitat and mining operation on the moon with 1970's / 1980's dollars and tech. I remember there being numerous plans for a moonbase at the time, it was discussed by NASA often, but the thing is, no one could figure out how to actually make it work reasonably cheaply without seeming like a lavish and pointless boondoggle to Congress.
- Fifer82 9y agoI find it odd that in the 60s it was deemed affordable, but during the 2 decades of boomer super cycle, the female migration to the workforce, and spending money now which our grandchildrens grandchildren will be repaying... we could ill afford it.
- krapp 9y agoIt wasn't considered to be worth the cost, that's not entirely the same as not being affordable. The US wanted to focus on the Shuttle, satellite reconnaissance and Star Wars.
- ghaff 9y agoand ISS and unmanned probes.
- krapp 9y agoThe ISS is a good example of this phenomenon - it was going to be "Space Station Freedom[0]" before it became the "International Space Station" because budget cuts made the original plans no longer feasible. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom
- TorKlingberg 9y agoAlso the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, which presented both an unexpected opportunity and a risk. Opportunity in that Russia was no longer the enemy and could be a partner with experience running space stations. Risk in that Russia was not going to spend as much on space by themselves as the Soviet Union did, and their rocket engineers might have been tempted to go work for Iran, North Korea or other countries with nuclear ambitions. By doing the ISS together with Russia, those engineers were kept employed.
- Arizhel 9y agoYou're missing something important: back in those days, we didn't have to funnel all our wealth to a small number of billionaires (in fact, the term didn't really exist back then). Now, we do. Giving the vast majority of our wealth to a few billionaires like Gates, Buffet, Bezos, etc. costs a lot. So yeah, we simply can't afford this kind of stuff any more.
- cr0sh 9y ago
- smdz 9y agoI'm not discounting the efforts the US made back then. And there are many ongoing efforts - obviously I am not discounting those. I am questioning the rationale to not take advantage of the significant lead, especially when we (as humans) have better technology than before
- noir_lord 9y ago> but the thing is, no one could figure out how to actually make it work reasonably cheaply without seeming like a lavish and pointless boondoggle to Congress. I'd sooner they spent the money on a lavish boondoggle that would inspire a generation (moonbase) than a lavish boondoggle designed to blow stuff up (F35). Note: I'm not a disliker of the F35, I think when they work the bugs out it'll be a pretty fantastic plane - though whether it'll be value for money is arguable (and there isn't enough evidence one way or the other).
- PerfectDlite 9y agoMoonbase will be a lavish boondoggle designed to blow up and then activists will argue that this boondoggle must be scraped and money redirected to world hunger/saving whales etc.
- noir_lord 9y agoSend the activists to the moon base, you see a problem I see a solution.
- givan 9y agoYou need to read this https://www.amazon.com/Penetration-ebook/dp/B00OQT960G/ https://www.amazon.com/Penetration-ebook/dp/B00OQT960G/
- ceejayoz 9y agoWritten by the guy whose pre-Voyager psychic remote viewing of the gas giant Jupiter revealed its rocky, mountainous, crystalline surface? Yeah, I'll pass.
- JshWright 9y agoThe Moon doesn't buy us much... Water ice and He-3, sure, but that's about it. You can't swing a dead cat in the solar system without hitting a chunk of water ice and we are a long ways from needing substantial quantities of He-3. Mars makes a more sense for a lot of reasons. A self-sustaining outpost on Mars is a _lot_ more plausible than the Moon. Due to the availability of carbon, there are a lot of substances that are a lot easier to make on Mars (notably, rocket fuel). The Martian atmosphere is 100x less dense than Earth's, but it is 100000000x more dense than the Moon's. While ~0.01 atm isn't a lot of pressure, it's certainly enough to be useful. The Moon is closer, but really they're both firmly in "if something goes wrong, you'd better be able to fix it on your own" territory. It takes a bit more energy to get to Mars, but since you can use the atmosphere of Mars to slow down, the difference in energy requirements to get to the surface of each aren't vastly different. If ESA and CNSA want to head to the Moon, great, I think any progress in that direction is great, but I think Mars is a much better goal (and the Moon isn't really "on the way" to Mars).
- rimliu 9y ago> you can use the atmosphere of Mars to slow down Is that true? Because my understanding is that Mars have just enough atmosphere to cause troubles but not enough to help. Hence the tumbler design of smaller spacecraft landing on it and insanely complicated landing of Curiosity which is larger.
- ceejayoz 9y agoThe Martian atmosphere is commonly used to aerobrake. If you can use parachutes in the Martian atmosphere (at least to some extent), you can sure as hell use it to slow a spacecraft. https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/timeline/mtaerobraking/ https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/timeline/mtaerobraking/ https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/sci/aerobrake/SFMech.html https://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/sci/aerobrake/SFMech.html https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/mission/timeline/mtaerobraking/ https://mars.nasa.gov/odyssey/mission/timeline/mtaerobraking... etc. Curiosity's complex landing system had little to do with the atmosphere, and a lot more to do with a) not wanting to land the thing on a hillside or in a crater it couldn't get out of (which nearly happened to Opportunity - http://www.space.com/36587-mars-rover-opportunity-landing-site-new-photo.html http://www.space.com/36587-mars-rover-opportunity-landing-si...) and b) the much larger size than previous rovers, making airbag bouncing less suitable.