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I am a fan of that too, but I don't know how practical it is. What would we get out of having a manned station around the moon? It's a desolate piece of rock wi

I am a fan of that too, but I don't know how practical it is. What would we get out of having a manned station around the moon? It's a desolate piece of rock with little to no activity in the core. It's dead by all means, and the probes we have in orbit + instrumentation that was left by Apollo and the tons of moon rock we brought back I think already gave us an abundant amount of data to work with. But alas, I am a computer programmer and that's just what I think. I could very well be wrong and there could be a lot of value in having a manned lunar station.

ceejayoz 9y ago
The Moon has water ice in spots (and its low gravity and lack of atmosphere make that pretty easy to get into orbit) that could potentially be used to stock up a refueling depot for exploration further out in the system.
c22 9y ago
You could build a telescope there. Also managing infrastructure, survival, and resupply would grant loads of experience applicable to habitating Mars with cheaper fuel costs and a slightly easier abort option should something go wrong.
thearn4 9y ago
I think that it would be a good place to develop ISRU capability, to enable us to do further exploration targets in the future.
CydeWeys 9y ago
You misread the previous comment. The suggestion isn't a manned station around the Moon (which would have more negatives than positives versus existing LEO stations), it's a manned station on the Moon. There are plenty of reasons that having a base on the Moon would be useful. You can extract resources (including fuels, water, and construction materials) which would reduce resupply requirements, there's gravity which makes long-term habitation safer, and we'd start getting experience with manned stations that would directly transfer over to Mars. On a Moon base, if everything totally fails, you can always still get back to Earth and survive, or survive long enough for help to make it your way, so it's a lower risk than attempting to build a base from scratch on Mars. On Mars if everything totally fails, you're dead. There's also the propellant depot scenario -- mine propellant on the Moon and use it to refuel ships that launch from the Earth. The Moon's gravity well isn't that deep and there are no atmospheric losses, so you can do farther/faster/cheaper launches using a smaller spaceship that reaches LEO mostly empty, then refuels at the Moon.

ceejayoz 9y ago

The Moon has water ice in spots (and its low gravity and lack of atmosphere make that pretty easy to get into orbit) that could potentially be used to stock up a refueling depot for exploration further out in the system.

c22 9y ago

You could build a telescope there. Also managing infrastructure, survival, and resupply would grant loads of experience applicable to habitating Mars with cheaper fuel costs and a slightly easier abort option should something go wrong.

thearn4 9y ago

I think that it would be a good place to develop ISRU capability, to enable us to do further exploration targets in the future.

CydeWeys 9y ago

You misread the previous comment. The suggestion isn't a manned station around the Moon (which would have more negatives than positives versus existing LEO stations), it's a manned station on the Moon. There are plenty of reasons that having a base on the Moon would be useful. You can extract resources (including fuels, water, and construction materials) which would reduce resupply requirements, there's gravity which makes long-term habitation safer, and we'd start getting experience with manned stations that would directly transfer over to Mars. On a Moon base, if everything totally fails, you can always still get back to Earth and survive, or survive long enough for help to make it your way, so it's a lower risk than attempting to build a base from scratch on Mars. On Mars if everything totally fails, you're dead. There's also the propellant depot scenario -- mine propellant on the Moon and use it to refuel ships that launch from the Earth. The Moon's gravity well isn't that deep and there are no atmospheric losses, so you can do farther/faster/cheaper launches using a smaller spaceship that reaches LEO mostly empty, then refuels at the Moon.