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Something I’ve wondered…why not colonize the moon first? Why straight to Mars? Seems like a moon base would make some sense, right?

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stevenwoo 4y ago
This essay argues that a moon base is required to study the long term effects of low gravity and greater radiation exposure or test such systems to ameliorate those problems in situ before designing the systems for deploying on Mars, the space station is not enough for this and close to the end of life.
- m4rtink 4y ago
  Well, there are quite a few commercial space stations currently in the pipeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stati... Not to mention the Chinese one already in orbit.
mortehu 4y ago
The Artemis program, which launched its first test flight recently, indeed intends to start with a moon base. https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4 https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > The Artemis program, which launched its first test flight recently, indeed intends to start with a moon base. In November SLS finally launched [0], despite an incredibly over schedule, extremely over budget for it's first Artimus-1 launch; ULA has taken far too many resources to be proud of this, but it has launched successfully. Startship has been set to have a orbital test flight for the last couple of months, one wonders how much the delay is attributed to the FAA being upset with Elon's absurd antics as of late, and will have way more thrust power than SLS [1]. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWR5tFgJKIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWR5tFgJKIQ 1: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/sls-vs-starship https://www.inverse.com/innovation/sls-vs-starship
TchoBeer 4y ago
The moon has no atmosphere and is much less dense. Mars has some advantages which can potentially make it self sustaining in the long future.

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stevenwoo 4y ago

This essay argues that a moon base is required to study the long term effects of low gravity and greater radiation exposure or test such systems to ameliorate those problems in situ before designing the systems for deploying on Mars, the space station is not enough for this and close to the end of life.

m4rtink 4y ago
Well, there are quite a few commercial space stations currently in the pipeline: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_space_stati... Not to mention the Chinese one already in orbit.

mortehu 4y ago

The Artemis program, which launched its first test flight recently, indeed intends to start with a moon base. https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4 https://youtu.be/_T8cn2J13-4

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> The Artemis program, which launched its first test flight recently, indeed intends to start with a moon base. In November SLS finally launched [0], despite an incredibly over schedule, extremely over budget for it's first Artimus-1 launch; ULA has taken far too many resources to be proud of this, but it has launched successfully. Startship has been set to have a orbital test flight for the last couple of months, one wonders how much the delay is attributed to the FAA being upset with Elon's absurd antics as of late, and will have way more thrust power than SLS [1]. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWR5tFgJKIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWR5tFgJKIQ 1: https://www.inverse.com/innovation/sls-vs-starship https://www.inverse.com/innovation/sls-vs-starship

TchoBeer 4y ago

The moon has no atmosphere and is much less dense. Mars has some advantages which can potentially make it self sustaining in the long future.