7 ms·

A moon colony may be a reality sooner than we think

49 points by cornellwright 8y ago

qop 8y ago
I'm not reading TFA because I'm sure it's garbage, however Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian (the book) recently out a new book out called Artemis and I won't spoil it, but there is a moon and there is people living on it. Really awesome book with a TON of cool details about space and construction and chemistry and physics, orbital dynamics, welding, robotics, navigation, biology, religion, it literally has all this shit and more. Great book. One of the best I've read.
- jhpankow 8y ago
  I read a portion of it before looking at the author. It certainly is fluffy.
- friedman23 8y ago
  Do you consider yourself to be someone that is open minded? If you do you should reevaluate.
  - qop 8y ago
    I consider my time too valuable to read NYTimes. You may not respect yourself enough to say the same.
  - dang 8y ago
    Personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Hextinium 8y ago
So the government created a organization to help with commercialization of space, I don't see how this will help because launch costs are still high and they still have to go through the FAA to launch. Yes launch prices will come down but it's still it's still probably 10-20 years before costs are low enough to reach anything the size of the ISS is even feasible for anything other than governments.
- chii 8y ago
  > feasible for anything other than governments. if there's profit involved, then it will be feasible for other entities than gov'ts. For example, if a useful mineral that's hard to obtain is found on the moon (unlikely as it is...), mining and processing it into goods might be the impetus for such a change.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    There is revenue involved, but not enough to cover the costs. You can do anything and you can sell anything, when engineers use the word feasible they often mean "the prices are right."
- valuearb 8y ago
  Much of the ISS was lifted by the most expensive launch system in history, the Space Shuttle. It cost nearly $40,000 per pound ($200B for 135 flights), probably $50,000+ in today’s dollars. The Falcon Heavy is priced to lift cargo at less than $1,000 per pound, and can launch three times heavier payloads than the Shuttle. That would drop the nominal launch cost of the components for an ISS sized spacelab to under one billion dollars. Space launch costs have already plummeted, and are poised to plummet even faster in the next decade. If the BFR is successful at full re-use (actually, it’s really if the BFS can be successfully reused often without costly refurbishing, as the BFR’s re-use is a straightforward repetition of the proven Falcon 9 approach), Elon’s crazy and bold claims of per-launch costs Of $5M are actually feasible.That would work out to something under $50 per pound, and the ISS components less than $50M to launch. When full re-use occurs, it will be when launch costs start to converge near fuel costs, which are typically less than a half million dollars per flight.
forapurpose 8y ago
Lots of people on HN keep up with the space industry and news. Is there any coverage of this story elsewhere? I'd really like to see the other side(s) of this story. I don't trust op-eds at all, especially by politicians, especially by this U.S. administration, especially in regard to it helping its supporters (big business). EDIT: And trying to hook people with moon colonies is transparent. EDIT: added first paragraph, to get to the point promptly, and edited the second.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Here is the executive directive: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-reforming-modernizing-american-commercial-space-policy/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do... Nothing has been done yet (only started), and what's been started isn't a new program, but some regulatory and administrative changes. Therefore if you don't trust the predictions of politicians (a wise choice) then there is no information.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > if you don't trust the predictions of politicians (a wise choice) then there is no information There could be plenty of analysis from others.
- jofer 8y ago
  See http://spacenews.com/new-policy-directive-implements-commercial-space-regulatory-reforms/ http://spacenews.com/new-policy-directive-implements-commerc... I'm not sure there's really an opposing view in this case. In broad terms, everyone seems to agree that some commercial space policies are no longer serving their intended purpose and are in need of updates. Whether or not this directive will improve matters is unclear, however.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > everyone seems to agree I haven't heard from anyone but big business, who designed the policy, and who are generally the primary beneficiaries of this administration. Have you heard from science? Small business? Public interest groups? Anyone else?
avmich 8y ago
> Competition is already fierce, with Russia and China challenging the United States for leadership That's incorrect. Russia hardly ever pushes new things in space lately. China has carefully launched several manned flights, and works hard in government space; but no commercial revolution in space of SpaceX scale anywhere on the horizon, for good reasons. The biggest opponent of USA in space today is USA itself.
- friedman23 8y ago
  When US officials talk up other countries in areas such as military, space, or general technology they do it because they are trying to get funding for something.
jack9 8y ago
The Mars Colony that people have assured me will be in operation within the next 50 years, is still 150 years away at least.
- adrianN 8y ago
  We could start building a Mars colony pretty much right now if we wanted to, but nobody is willing to pay for it. Check for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct for a feasible proposal.
kumarvvr 8y ago
Pondering over the uses of such an endeavor. - Tourism - Minerals - Building a space observatory - Launchpad for further manned planetary missions. I did read somewhere that, just as easy it is to get off the moons surface, it's equally or more difficult to get onto it.
- avmich 8y ago
  In addition to selenology (which is a big deal because no celestial bodies other than Earth are so far extensively explored) and places for telescopes, Moon can be a source of some metals (Al, Ti, Fe), oxygen and some other elements, perhaps hydrogen. By mass metals and LOX/LH2 could be the majority of mass transported in Moon-Earth space in near future. Other important payloads are electronics - relatively light - and humans. So Moon can supply vast majority of material needed for operations in Moon-Earth space. You can maybe launch the materials using a mass driver (some demos here - http://ssi.org/mass-driver-demonstration-tapes/ http://ssi.org/mass-driver-demonstration-tapes/), but even more conventional technology will give you results.
- minitoar 8y ago
  This is why a lunar base should basically just be a refinery, launching fuel into orbit to refuel ships destined for other planets.
spyckie2 8y ago
The author is Wilbur Ross, current secretary of commerce, and it feels like he was compelled to write this piece after this interaction: >I can still remember when President John F. Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the moon and when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the lunar landscape. Glued to televisions, Americans were filled with excitement and national pride during the Apollo missions. > Last month I felt that same passion as I visited the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs with Vice President Mike Pence. “As we push human exploration deeper into space, we will unleash the boundless potential of America’s pioneering commercial space companies,” the vice president told the crowd. It sounds like the space industry is growing and that's a good thing for space technology. As much as we laud American accomplishes in space exploration, it can be argued that the only investor and customer was the US, and the short term value extracted out of space was negligible. Today, there's much more market opportunities in space than previously. 15000 satellites by 2024 is an explosive growth of 20x in 5 years. Tickets selling for low orbit tourism - that didn't exist in the past. Asteroid mining - that still seems like a pipe dream, but I'm no expert, it may be more plausible than I realize. Regardless, it's a huge indicator of a healthier space industry if a substantial part of the investment into space is coming from private companies (SpaceX notably) rather than government grants.
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
  It’s not really a space industry, it’s a Low Earth Orbit Industry. It’s technically space, but only on the loosest sense. It’s good that we’re finally driving down the price of lifting cargo to LEO, but sad that we’ve almost given up on anything beyond that. The total world R&D budget for everything beyond LEO would impoverish a single pharmaceutical company’s marketimg budget, so we’re probably far from deserving backslapping and high fives. Most of all, we’re far from colonies anywhere other than Earth, and barring a massive change of priorities as reflected in funding, that’s the future. Nothing about our ability to launch satellites a few hundred miles up translates to living on the Moon, or Mars.
  - spyckie2 8y ago
    I'd argue that space research is a large enough expenditure that it can only be supported (as in systematically support, not a billionaire gifting their life savings) by the market. There's nothing sad about it, money has to come from somewhere. If you're talking between NGOs, government, or the market, which one has the most well funded and successful ventures , the market wins every time. It scales better than top down funding and provides longevity and sustained results. LEO is a great stepping stone and maturity there is a prerequisite IMO for further space exploration. The goal is not just landing on Mars - the goal is building up a space ecosystem, and this seems to be the right start.
ncmncm 8y ago
Move along, nothing to see here. It is quite stunning how lightweight and meaningless this editorial is. The only real question is why NYT printed it. There is undoubtedly a reason somewhere in the bowels of the newsroom, but it is certainly not a reason to read it, much less to post a link to it.
nazz 8y ago
The space race to put a man on Mars is no longer international. It's completely domestic, between NASA and SpaceX. NASA's SLS (Space Launch System) versus SpaceX's BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is an interesting comparison to examine. Both look promising despite the numerous possible setbacks. Looking forward to upcoming information regarding the manned launches to Mars.
jimmywanger 8y ago
An underwater colony is far cheaper and more feasible than a moon colony. When people talk about exploring outer space, they should think about exploring the continental shelf and building colonies there rather than building colonies on another planet.
- eesmith 8y ago
  Or Bruce Sterling statement in 2004: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach."
yellowapple 8y ago
I just appreciate that SPACE is a recursive acronym.
forapurpose 8y ago
Much more info is available elsewhere. It seems like this is the 'deregulate X' for all X formula applied to commercial space flight. I'm not for or against regulations; I think that you can only have a reasonable about particular regulations, and then the analysis is more complex than 'for or against' (tighten this, loosen that, fund this, accelerate this other thing, etc.). It would be great to hear an analysis of the costs and benefits of the specific changes; I'm afraid the only voices are on one side; this change as announced is all about one group's interests, big business; how will it affect others - public interest, taxpayers, science, military, small business, NASA research, astronauts, the use of space in other countries and among partners, etc.? Here's some much better info than the parent link, though still basically only a detailed rehash of the announcement with no other points of view or analysis: https://www.space.com/40692-president-trump-private-spaceflight-policy-directive.html https://www.space.com/40692-president-trump-private-spacefli... A lot of background from a few days ago, also all one-dimensional unfortunately: https://www.complianceweek.com/news/news-article/spaceregulations-jpm https://www.complianceweek.com/news/news-article/spaceregula... And a timely money quote: "Right now, we don't let self driving cars go everywhere although we do allow it in a lot of places," Ketcham said. "Eventually, that technology will mature (to a point) that no one will notice. And the same is true in space flight." https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/640565002 https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/640565002

49 points by cornellwright 8y ago

qop 8y ago

I'm not reading TFA because I'm sure it's garbage, however Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian (the book) recently out a new book out called Artemis and I won't spoil it, but there is a moon and there is people living on it. Really awesome book with a TON of cool details about space and construction and chemistry and physics, orbital dynamics, welding, robotics, navigation, biology, religion, it literally has all this shit and more. Great book. One of the best I've read.

jhpankow 8y ago
I read a portion of it before looking at the author. It certainly is fluffy.
friedman23 8y ago
Do you consider yourself to be someone that is open minded? If you do you should reevaluate.
- qop 8y ago
  I consider my time too valuable to read NYTimes. You may not respect yourself enough to say the same.
- dang 8y ago
  Personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't do that. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Hextinium 8y ago

So the government created a organization to help with commercialization of space, I don't see how this will help because launch costs are still high and they still have to go through the FAA to launch. Yes launch prices will come down but it's still it's still probably 10-20 years before costs are low enough to reach anything the size of the ISS is even feasible for anything other than governments.

chii 8y ago
> feasible for anything other than governments. if there's profit involved, then it will be feasible for other entities than gov'ts. For example, if a useful mineral that's hard to obtain is found on the moon (unlikely as it is...), mining and processing it into goods might be the impetus for such a change.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  There is revenue involved, but not enough to cover the costs. You can do anything and you can sell anything, when engineers use the word feasible they often mean "the prices are right."
valuearb 8y ago
Much of the ISS was lifted by the most expensive launch system in history, the Space Shuttle. It cost nearly $40,000 per pound ($200B for 135 flights), probably $50,000+ in today’s dollars. The Falcon Heavy is priced to lift cargo at less than $1,000 per pound, and can launch three times heavier payloads than the Shuttle. That would drop the nominal launch cost of the components for an ISS sized spacelab to under one billion dollars. Space launch costs have already plummeted, and are poised to plummet even faster in the next decade. If the BFR is successful at full re-use (actually, it’s really if the BFS can be successfully reused often without costly refurbishing, as the BFR’s re-use is a straightforward repetition of the proven Falcon 9 approach), Elon’s crazy and bold claims of per-launch costs Of $5M are actually feasible.That would work out to something under $50 per pound, and the ISS components less than $50M to launch. When full re-use occurs, it will be when launch costs start to converge near fuel costs, which are typically less than a half million dollars per flight.

forapurpose 8y ago

Lots of people on HN keep up with the space industry and news. Is there any coverage of this story elsewhere? I'd really like to see the other side(s) of this story. I don't trust op-eds at all, especially by politicians, especially by this U.S. administration, especially in regard to it helping its supporters (big business). EDIT: And trying to hook people with moon colonies is transparent. EDIT: added first paragraph, to get to the point promptly, and edited the second.

whatshisface 8y ago
Here is the executive directive: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-reforming-modernizing-american-commercial-space-policy/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-do... Nothing has been done yet (only started), and what's been started isn't a new program, but some regulatory and administrative changes. Therefore if you don't trust the predictions of politicians (a wise choice) then there is no information.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > if you don't trust the predictions of politicians (a wise choice) then there is no information There could be plenty of analysis from others.
jofer 8y ago
See http://spacenews.com/new-policy-directive-implements-commercial-space-regulatory-reforms/ http://spacenews.com/new-policy-directive-implements-commerc... I'm not sure there's really an opposing view in this case. In broad terms, everyone seems to agree that some commercial space policies are no longer serving their intended purpose and are in need of updates. Whether or not this directive will improve matters is unclear, however.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > everyone seems to agree I haven't heard from anyone but big business, who designed the policy, and who are generally the primary beneficiaries of this administration. Have you heard from science? Small business? Public interest groups? Anyone else?

avmich 8y ago

> Competition is already fierce, with Russia and China challenging the United States for leadership That's incorrect. Russia hardly ever pushes new things in space lately. China has carefully launched several manned flights, and works hard in government space; but no commercial revolution in space of SpaceX scale anywhere on the horizon, for good reasons. The biggest opponent of USA in space today is USA itself.

friedman23 8y ago
When US officials talk up other countries in areas such as military, space, or general technology they do it because they are trying to get funding for something.

jack9 8y ago

The Mars Colony that people have assured me will be in operation within the next 50 years, is still 150 years away at least.

adrianN 8y ago
We could start building a Mars colony pretty much right now if we wanted to, but nobody is willing to pay for it. Check for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct for a feasible proposal.

kumarvvr 8y ago

Pondering over the uses of such an endeavor. - Tourism - Minerals - Building a space observatory - Launchpad for further manned planetary missions. I did read somewhere that, just as easy it is to get off the moons surface, it's equally or more difficult to get onto it.

avmich 8y ago
In addition to selenology (which is a big deal because no celestial bodies other than Earth are so far extensively explored) and places for telescopes, Moon can be a source of some metals (Al, Ti, Fe), oxygen and some other elements, perhaps hydrogen. By mass metals and LOX/LH2 could be the majority of mass transported in Moon-Earth space in near future. Other important payloads are electronics - relatively light - and humans. So Moon can supply vast majority of material needed for operations in Moon-Earth space. You can maybe launch the materials using a mass driver (some demos here - http://ssi.org/mass-driver-demonstration-tapes/ http://ssi.org/mass-driver-demonstration-tapes/), but even more conventional technology will give you results.
minitoar 8y ago
This is why a lunar base should basically just be a refinery, launching fuel into orbit to refuel ships destined for other planets.

spyckie2 8y ago

The author is Wilbur Ross, current secretary of commerce, and it feels like he was compelled to write this piece after this interaction: >I can still remember when President John F. Kennedy declared that America would put a man on the moon and when Neil Armstrong took that first step on the lunar landscape. Glued to televisions, Americans were filled with excitement and national pride during the Apollo missions. > Last month I felt that same passion as I visited the Space Symposium in Colorado Springs with Vice President Mike Pence. “As we push human exploration deeper into space, we will unleash the boundless potential of America’s pioneering commercial space companies,” the vice president told the crowd. It sounds like the space industry is growing and that's a good thing for space technology. As much as we laud American accomplishes in space exploration, it can be argued that the only investor and customer was the US, and the short term value extracted out of space was negligible. Today, there's much more market opportunities in space than previously. 15000 satellites by 2024 is an explosive growth of 20x in 5 years. Tickets selling for low orbit tourism - that didn't exist in the past. Asteroid mining - that still seems like a pipe dream, but I'm no expert, it may be more plausible than I realize. Regardless, it's a huge indicator of a healthier space industry if a substantial part of the investment into space is coming from private companies (SpaceX notably) rather than government grants.

DmenshunlAnlsis 8y ago
It’s not really a space industry, it’s a Low Earth Orbit Industry. It’s technically space, but only on the loosest sense. It’s good that we’re finally driving down the price of lifting cargo to LEO, but sad that we’ve almost given up on anything beyond that. The total world R&D budget for everything beyond LEO would impoverish a single pharmaceutical company’s marketimg budget, so we’re probably far from deserving backslapping and high fives. Most of all, we’re far from colonies anywhere other than Earth, and barring a massive change of priorities as reflected in funding, that’s the future. Nothing about our ability to launch satellites a few hundred miles up translates to living on the Moon, or Mars.
- spyckie2 8y ago
  I'd argue that space research is a large enough expenditure that it can only be supported (as in systematically support, not a billionaire gifting their life savings) by the market. There's nothing sad about it, money has to come from somewhere. If you're talking between NGOs, government, or the market, which one has the most well funded and successful ventures , the market wins every time. It scales better than top down funding and provides longevity and sustained results. LEO is a great stepping stone and maturity there is a prerequisite IMO for further space exploration. The goal is not just landing on Mars - the goal is building up a space ecosystem, and this seems to be the right start.

ncmncm 8y ago

Move along, nothing to see here. It is quite stunning how lightweight and meaningless this editorial is. The only real question is why NYT printed it. There is undoubtedly a reason somewhere in the bowels of the newsroom, but it is certainly not a reason to read it, much less to post a link to it.

nazz 8y ago

The space race to put a man on Mars is no longer international. It's completely domestic, between NASA and SpaceX. NASA's SLS (Space Launch System) versus SpaceX's BFR (Big Falcon Rocket) is an interesting comparison to examine. Both look promising despite the numerous possible setbacks. Looking forward to upcoming information regarding the manned launches to Mars.

jimmywanger 8y ago

An underwater colony is far cheaper and more feasible than a moon colony. When people talk about exploring outer space, they should think about exploring the continental shelf and building colonies there rather than building colonies on another planet.

eesmith 8y ago
Or Bruce Sterling statement in 2004: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people setting the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach."

yellowapple 8y ago

I just appreciate that SPACE is a recursive acronym.

forapurpose 8y ago

Much more info is available elsewhere. It seems like this is the 'deregulate X' for all X formula applied to commercial space flight. I'm not for or against regulations; I think that you can only have a reasonable about particular regulations, and then the analysis is more complex than 'for or against' (tighten this, loosen that, fund this, accelerate this other thing, etc.). It would be great to hear an analysis of the costs and benefits of the specific changes; I'm afraid the only voices are on one side; this change as announced is all about one group's interests, big business; how will it affect others - public interest, taxpayers, science, military, small business, NASA research, astronauts, the use of space in other countries and among partners, etc.? Here's some much better info than the parent link, though still basically only a detailed rehash of the announcement with no other points of view or analysis: https://www.space.com/40692-president-trump-private-spaceflight-policy-directive.html https://www.space.com/40692-president-trump-private-spacefli... A lot of background from a few days ago, also all one-dimensional unfortunately: https://www.complianceweek.com/news/news-article/spaceregulations-jpm https://www.complianceweek.com/news/news-article/spaceregula... And a timely money quote: "Right now, we don't let self driving cars go everywhere although we do allow it in a lot of places," Ketcham said. "Eventually, that technology will mature (to a point) that no one will notice. And the same is true in space flight." https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/640565002 https://amp.usatoday.com/amp/640565002