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Why? It's an airless rock that sits at the bottom of a gravity well that has maybe a smidge of water. I guess you can make yourself a nice radiation shelter the
by greesil 8y ago
Why? It's an airless rock that sits at the bottom of a gravity well that has maybe a smidge of water. I guess you can make yourself a nice radiation shelter there?
- weissguy123 8y agoThere is a lot of Helium-3 on the moon that could make the trip worth it.
- greesil 8y agoYes, and the tokamaks on Earth to use it are going to be ready when? And why bother when deuterium tritium reactions are sort of okay (waste half life on the order of 100 years)
- shawn 8y agoBecause we can. In the 13.72 billion years the universe has existed, we're the only ones who can.
- ajmurmann 8y agoThe only ones who can what? Settle our moon? Settle other bodies?
- jonathankoren 8y agoThere's a lot things we can do. That's not a reason unto itself. This is just adventure travel, gussied up with delusions of species destiny from space operas. Why not settle the Gobi Desert? Develop technologies to suck carbon out of the air, and reverse global warming? Develop technologies to cope with climate disruption, or even just purchase land for the anticipated climate refugees. All of these are really Hard problems, and billion times more pressing, and much more obvious impact.
- pdonis 8y agoActually, it's in a much shallower gravity well than Earth is; that plus the airlessness makes it a much better launch platform for interplanetary spacecraft.
- greesil 8y agoAn even better launch platform is empty space (pick any Earth moon Lagrange point) where there is no delta V penalty.
- s2g 8y agoBut also no gravity which is problematic.
- icelancer 8y agoThere is increased complexity when launching from empty space / manmade built platforms. There's also the potential for Project Orion to be launched from the moon, where this would probably not be acceptable from empty space.
- akira2501 8y agoThese orbits are unstable and require careful stationkeeping or a large orbital amplitude to maintain a semi-stable orbit.
- greesil 8y agoL4 and L5?
- refurb 8y agoYeah, but anything that ends up on the moon must have come from earth, so why not just launch from the earth?
- s2g 8y agoBecause of the rocket equation.
- xor1 8y agoCapitalism demands limitless growth, and ultimately that means leaving the planet. Colonizing the moon is the first major step.
- pravinva 8y agoNot capitalism. Human progress and dynamism. We could all live pre industrial life, be born and die at 30, be cold and sick most of the time and die mostly illiterate. Nasty, short and brutish i.e that ship has long sailed now
- nordsieck 8y agoIf you look at the moon as a really good space station as opposed to a planet, I think there are many good reasons to set up a base there. * Gravity: enough to help with long term habitation, but low enough that getting on and off is much, much easier than Earth. * Close to Earth * Enough space that one could build a lot of things. It's a lot cheaper to dig than it is to launch more space station modules.
- evanlivingston 8y agoBut to what end do we need a really good space station? I realize we can work on more than one problem at a time and that it is expedient to do so. But I often wonder how much space exploration, particularly manned missions, are a distraction from more pressing issues on our home planet. Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed.
- icelancer 8y ago>> Also, if space exploration is a more scientifically exciting problem than say, ensuring enduring sources of clean water for the millions of people who don't have access to it, well then, that's a sad world indeed. Enduring sources of clean water for everyone in the world is a scientifically very easy problem to solve compared to most of what is discussed on this website. The problem is that it is a politically very difficult problem to solve. And you want Bezos/Musk/etc to fix this... how?
- evanlivingston 8y agoOh God, I don't want to delegate the task of fixing to the world to just a few tech moguls. However, I would be encouraged to see the scientific community Incorporate a stronger social solidarity into their work. Because a problem is hard or simple is not reason enough alone to pursue it, personally. Finding the largest prime number known might be a somewhat difficult task, but to what end is it found?
- Numberwang 8y agoWhy do anything? The reason we have all that we have is a combination of exploration and problem solving. Meaning often comes at the same time as you solve a problem, not nessesarily before.