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Not a rocket scientist, nor do I have any hard numbers, but off the top of my head the Moon has a much smaller gravity well than Mars or Venus. On Mars, you wou
by sparky_z 9y ago
Not a rocket scientist, nor do I have any hard numbers, but off the top of my head the Moon has a much smaller gravity well than Mars or Venus. On Mars, you would waste much more fuel just getting back into orbit. And Venus is just comically toxic. We weren't even able to build a single probe that lasted more than a couple hours on the surface of Venus before corroding, much less a permanent settlement.
Also, the moon is only a few days of travel away, instead of months-to-years (so someone on a permanent base could be medically evacuated if they have a tricky tumor, say.)
- taneq 9y agoThe Moon's gravity well is smaller but, with no atmosphere, it's both much easier to escape, and much harder to land softly on. If anything, I'd guess our best bet is a propellant factory on the Moon, using a magnetic launcher to shoot the fuel into lunar orbit to supply an orbiting fuel station.
- stoolpigeon 9y agoGiving the moon magnetic catapults is giving the moon weapons for their eventual war for freedom from earth.
- jagger27 9y agoMagnetic launchers can be used in reverse as catchers too as a sort of atmosphere replacement.
- NegativeLatency 9y agoHow so? Would you have to "land" by going back down the barrel of the launch device?
- taneq 9y agoThat'd be quite a trick if you could pull it off - the precision required seems formidable, though.
- ricardobeat 9y agoLike trying to land a rocket upright back on its launchpad. Lunacy.
- taneq 9y agoThe rocket gets to 'fly' in, taking advantage of the atmosphere for control and braking. Not that it's not a bonkers achievement but the speeds are much higher and the tolerances much lower to slot an orbiting payload back into a linear rail.
- e12e 9y agoMagnetic Lander might be a decent smartphone game...
- dogma1138 9y agoHow is that that much different than landing on an aircraft carrier?
- kwhitefoot 9y agoShould be easier if we can assume that the vehicle is powered because the landing stage is not moving.
- Govindae 9y agoIt's occuring at orbital velocity in a vacuum.
- hordeallergy 9y agoHow about a space elevator?
- sethrin 9y agoYou should look up proposals for Venusian cloud cities. In many senses Venus is more hospitable than Mars.
- nine_k 9y agoOn Mars, or on Moon, you have a lot of local materials to build from. A Venusean floating city needs to be brought in completely from the outside.
- sethrin 9y agoI can see how you might think that, I suppose, but you do actually have an entire planet full of useful resources at hand, even if they're not ones that you might immediately think of. There are many things that you can reasonably extract or synthesize from the Venusian atmosphere, particularly plastics. This StackExchange answer has more details: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9158/what-useful-materials-can-be-extracted-from-venusian-atmosphere https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9158/what-useful-m...