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There are many questions to this line of thinking. Technology marches ahead, and cumulative advancements are large even in comparison to early 1990, when NASA c

by avmich 9y ago

There are many questions to this line of thinking. Technology marches ahead, and cumulative advancements are large even in comparison to early 1990, when NASA conducted studies have shown possibility for manned return to the Moon for about a billion dollars. Similarly, goals to go there now include space tourism - something not heard of even in late 1990 - or mining the Moon water, which we know more about today than when Clementine flew. Even such a boring thing as oxygen can be marketable after offering it in quantity on a convenient orbit for many customers to take. When SpaceX demonstrated the expenses which it took to develop and fly Falcon-1 with supporting infrastructure, they beat the existing cost models by about a factor of four. Similarly here reaching the Moon can turn out easier than thought, and reasons to go there could become better than used to believe, as soon as some favorable conditions, like in 2002 when SpaceX was born, will be met.

GlenTheMachine 9y ago
Right, which is why the asteroid mining discussion is interesting — there are minerals in asteroids that have significant value, and if you could get the cost of access to space low enough, it might make economic sense to go get them. I'm skeptical that the economics of asteroid mining are going to close in the next fifty years, but there is at least a coherent argument for it. But the moon is just a big rock. As far as we know, there's nothing there with any intrinsic value - the only economic value of the moon is that it's out of earth's gravity well. So if you had a sufficiently robust asteroid mining operation, or something, then basing it or staging it on the moon might make some sense. But the moon would only have secondary value in that scenario, and you have to postulate some space resource with really high primary value in order to justify being on the moon.

by avmich 9y ago

GlenTheMachine 9y ago

Right, which is why the asteroid mining discussion is interesting — there are minerals in asteroids that have significant value, and if you could get the cost of access to space low enough, it might make economic sense to go get them. I'm skeptical that the economics of asteroid mining are going to close in the next fifty years, but there is at least a coherent argument for it. But the moon is just a big rock. As far as we know, there's nothing there with any intrinsic value - the only economic value of the moon is that it's out of earth's gravity well. So if you had a sufficiently robust asteroid mining operation, or something, then basing it or staging it on the moon might make some sense. But the moon would only have secondary value in that scenario, and you have to postulate some space resource with really high primary value in order to justify being on the moon.