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>There is no practical reason for a moon space station. It makes neither scientific nor engineering sense. There is no practical reason for space travel in the
by aphextron 9y ago
>There is no practical reason for a moon space station. It makes neither scientific nor engineering sense.
There is no practical reason for space travel in the first place. We should do it because it's a cool thing to do and people will enjoy doing it. Everything else is an ancillary benefit.
- gnode 9y agoPracticality generally refers to usefulness in fulfilling a larger goal. A moon space station should either be cool in itself, or it should be a practical stepping stone on the way to something cooler. To many people it just seems like a cop out mission, that will use up the budget, short of efficiently working toward something really cool, like human space exploration beyond Earth.
- aphextron 9y agoI could easily see the billionaire class spending insane amounts of money vacationing out there if that was really a thing. The commercial opportunities that would bring are enormous. SpaceX already has two people committed and paid to orbit around the moon next year. In my mind, anything that gets people hyped for space exploration and investing real money and effort immediately is a good thing. Having lofty goals for mars exploration and colonization is important. But we need to practice and learn how to do it in the first place right now and close to home with what we know works, then build up. If it's commercially viable, there's no reason not to.