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Is there any advantage for a country to have a base on the moon?
by cgb223 9y ago
Is there any advantage for a country to have a base on the moon?
- space_fountain 9y agoIf you ever want to do a lot in space a ton
- space_fountain 9y agoSorry meant to expand more. The fact that the moon has such lower gravity than the earth means it's a lot cheaper in theory to get stuff from the surface of the moon to orbit than from earth
- lostlogin 9y agoBut there isn’t exactly a lot of readily available resources on the moon, so until that changes your just paying to lift stuff twice. Water may be an exception to this?
- sdenton4 9y agoYou can use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, aka, fuel. Finding an underground ice lake would provide lots of fuel, and save on lifting the heaviest, most important substance for manned exploration from earth.
- vorticalbox 9y agoWater takes a lot of energy to split. Take a small size as a pot on a cooker with a litre of water. Just to get that litre to bubble takes constant. Heating for minutes or imagine how long it would take to boil all that water away. Sure you'll have a lot of fuel but its not easily accessible.
- cgb223 9y agoHow much energy does it take to get stuff from the earth to the moon though? Is it that much less than leaving earths gravity all together?
- skgoa 9y agoThe point would be that the stuff we would use to explore/colonize the solar system would be made on the Moon with a relatively low investment in stuff having to be send there to set up the base and mining/production process. Ideally only humans themselves and a few personal items would be send up from Earth, with everything else having been produced in orbit.
- Razengan 9y agoEven without exploitable resources, space observation (telescopes) and communications systems on the Moon would have to contend with less interference from terrestrial noise, I’d guess. Having a foothold on the Moon would definitely assist further space exploration. Getaways to the moon would also become a great new tourism industry for the ultra-rich and wealthy, whose money would in turn spur advancements in off-world habitation and comfort that could trickle down to the general populace. I also think all human political leadership should be relocated to the Moon, at least for a week or two every year, to help them appreciate Earth a little better [0]. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_effect