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The question is why would we put a man on the moon? I grew up with Moonbase Alpha (although I am not expecting to be thrown into space by a major explosion) an

The question is why would we put a man on the moon? I grew up with Moonbase Alpha (although I am not expecting to be thrown into space by a major explosion) and want this as much as anyone else but is there any reason (mining, strategic, know benefits to research) which justifies the price?

ams6110 9y ago
That really explains why it happened the first time. Price was not a concern. We were on almost a war footing to get it done. The whole reason that NASA stopped innovating after about 1972 was that the costs were unsustainable.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  Yeah that's what I am thinking too. I would love that we are the point where we need a base on the moon, but I don't know what would justify it other than tourism and we aren't that rich and it isn't that easy and safe just yet.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I'd say the costs were projected to be unsustainable. There apparently was this whole episode with the Congress realizing that Wernher von Braun & crew are aiming for Mars, and deciding to cut the party short before it gets out of control[0]. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_support_and_cancellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_suppor...
nnq 9y ago
> is there any reason [...] which justifies the price THIS kind of thinking is our problem imho - we are living in rich times and we should start behaving as such! We have more of everything than we need. Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases somewhere in the world, but guess what, even if we'd be 10x richer there will still be. Or we'll whip out a world war or some runaway next gen bioweapons instead to ramp up the killing that way. That's who we (Homo Sapiens) fking are! A space race would be a pretty awesome way to encourage competition and progress on a scale similar to that encouraged by the last "world" war. But no, instead we'll go for the "mass-surveillance-technology supremacy race" or "best AIs for trading race" or the "let's pretend energy is scarce and price-war on in while talking about solving climate-change race"... GROWTH and EXPANSION are our only reasons of being and our own authentic good motivations as human beings, and infecting as much of the cosmos as possible with ourselves, aka "space technology" development should be our core drive as a species!!!
- ThomPete 9y ago
  As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones. To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust. And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans. So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.
  - nnq 9y ago
    > natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      The economic game is what makes it all make sense.
lmm 9y ago
I see it as worthwhile for the same reason that art or theoretical research is worthwhile.
- ThomPete 9y ago
  Philosophically I agree 100% but they cost a fraction of what it would cost to create a base on the moon for instance. Someone has to pick up that bill. I am sure we will get a base on the moon with time but technologically we aren't there yet. Let's focus on build a solid and habitable space station then we can use some of that knowledge to establish a base on the moon. (once we have solved the resource issues)
  - lmm 9y ago
    A moonbase is likely safer and more convenient in many ways than a space station, since you don't have to deal with microgravity. Certainly they have different problems with different solutions, so there's only a limited amount of knowledge that would transfer over. I'm not opposed to an "ISS 2.0", but how much more would we expect to learn from it that we don't already know? I think it's already time to go to the Moon and/or Phobos.
    - ThomPete 9y ago
      It's cheaper and closer to home to get it up and running and I don't believe there is any base to claim it will only be limited amount of transfer over. And if that was the case then the purpose of a moon base would be put even more into question. We have plenty to learn when it comes to building not just habitable space stations but also comfortable ones most of which will be easily transferable knowledge to a moon base when the cost of construction have come down signiticantly by the means of ex. space x or even a space elevator. There are so many things we could be spending money on which would make a moonbase way more likely to happen than just skipping over a lot of intermediate steps to get there.
      - lmm 9y ago
        So much of engineering is very different in zero-G. I want humanity to spread among the stars, so I want us to be able to construct habitats on planemos and smaller bodies. I don't see space stations as important in the long run; even interstellar spaceships would likely operate under continuous acceleration so involve little zero-G engineering.
Pigo 9y ago
There's no Soviet Union boogeyman to compete with. Maybe if North Korea was competent and had the resources to start shooting for the moon, then I'm pretty sure we'd deem it worthwhile. I'm not sure we fear China enough to see them as that type of threat.

ams6110 9y ago

That really explains why it happened the first time. Price was not a concern. We were on almost a war footing to get it done. The whole reason that NASA stopped innovating after about 1972 was that the costs were unsustainable.

ThomPete 9y ago
Yeah that's what I am thinking too. I would love that we are the point where we need a base on the moon, but I don't know what would justify it other than tourism and we aren't that rich and it isn't that easy and safe just yet.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
I'd say the costs were projected to be unsustainable. There apparently was this whole episode with the Congress realizing that Wernher von Braun & crew are aiming for Mars, and deciding to cut the party short before it gets out of control[0]. -- [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_support_and_cancellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NERVA#Loss_of_political_suppor...

nnq 9y ago

> is there any reason [...] which justifies the price THIS kind of thinking is our problem imho - we are living in rich times and we should start behaving as such! We have more of everything than we need. Yeah, there are children starving or dying of preventable diseases somewhere in the world, but guess what, even if we'd be 10x richer there will still be. Or we'll whip out a world war or some runaway next gen bioweapons instead to ramp up the killing that way. That's who we (Homo Sapiens) fking are! A space race would be a pretty awesome way to encourage competition and progress on a scale similar to that encouraged by the last "world" war. But no, instead we'll go for the "mass-surveillance-technology supremacy race" or "best AIs for trading race" or the "let's pretend energy is scarce and price-war on in while talking about solving climate-change race"... GROWTH and EXPANSION are our only reasons of being and our own authentic good motivations as human beings, and infecting as much of the cosmos as possible with ourselves, aka "space technology" development should be our core drive as a species!!!

ThomPete 9y ago
As much as I want to agree with you I think it's a very naive way of thinking about this problem (which can sometimes be good so don't get me wrong). I personally believe in what I call natural next steps. I.e steps that are naturally extending previous ones. To me, the next step is making the space station much more robust. And focusing on AI might actually be a much smarter move as it might allow us to build a secure and stable moonbase before we could do it using humans. So it's a very complex discussion where priorities might sometimes look like they are ignoring something like a space station on the moon, but actually end up being a better choice because it will allow us to get there quicker.
- nnq 9y ago
  > natural next steps This never works... People need to be forced into developing solution by creating more problems while solving existing one. Like "shit, the mars colony got wiped out by a diseases, no more humans to repair the stuff there, quick, figure out how to make robots that make more robots themselves, nothing else fits the budget". Or "shit, we underestimated the effects or magnitude of cosmic radiation on colonists, gotta accelerate work on those cures for cancer or we're fucked". And "alternative priority" things like AI or, dunno, cancer-research, will never compete for the same money bucket as space exploration. They'll likely end up receiving significantly more money since space exploration will just increase their value by orders of magnitude. Economy is never a zero some game like "spend money on this vs. that" if you play it on a large enough scale since most stuff is either in excess of "creatable". Only real finite resource is "space you can practically reach to fast enough". Too bad some people have started to actually believe the made up rules of our "economy game". Hmmm... now that I think about it, maybe our "economical game" is the problem: we've developed it so much, with manufactured needs and manufactured scarcities for the purpose of "hacking people into working the hardest they can", but now it's kind of turned against us. Maybe we need some serious rewrite of the code of global economy to start making the things that are technically possible actually possible...
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    The economic game is what makes it all make sense.

lmm 9y ago

I see it as worthwhile for the same reason that art or theoretical research is worthwhile.

ThomPete 9y ago
Philosophically I agree 100% but they cost a fraction of what it would cost to create a base on the moon for instance. Someone has to pick up that bill. I am sure we will get a base on the moon with time but technologically we aren't there yet. Let's focus on build a solid and habitable space station then we can use some of that knowledge to establish a base on the moon. (once we have solved the resource issues)
- lmm 9y ago
  A moonbase is likely safer and more convenient in many ways than a space station, since you don't have to deal with microgravity. Certainly they have different problems with different solutions, so there's only a limited amount of knowledge that would transfer over. I'm not opposed to an "ISS 2.0", but how much more would we expect to learn from it that we don't already know? I think it's already time to go to the Moon and/or Phobos.
  - ThomPete 9y ago
    It's cheaper and closer to home to get it up and running and I don't believe there is any base to claim it will only be limited amount of transfer over. And if that was the case then the purpose of a moon base would be put even more into question. We have plenty to learn when it comes to building not just habitable space stations but also comfortable ones most of which will be easily transferable knowledge to a moon base when the cost of construction have come down signiticantly by the means of ex. space x or even a space elevator. There are so many things we could be spending money on which would make a moonbase way more likely to happen than just skipping over a lot of intermediate steps to get there.
    - lmm 9y ago
      So much of engineering is very different in zero-G. I want humanity to spread among the stars, so I want us to be able to construct habitats on planemos and smaller bodies. I don't see space stations as important in the long run; even interstellar spaceships would likely operate under continuous acceleration so involve little zero-G engineering.

Pigo 9y ago

There's no Soviet Union boogeyman to compete with. Maybe if North Korea was competent and had the resources to start shooting for the moon, then I'm pretty sure we'd deem it worthwhile. I'm not sure we fear China enough to see them as that type of threat.