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Hell yeah! It would be very cool if we are able to properly colonize the moon in my lifetime. Even if we don't have humans living there like in Futurama (as c

Hell yeah! It would be very cool if we are able to properly colonize the moon in my lifetime. Even if we don't have humans living there like in Futurama (as cool as that would be), it would be unbelievably cool if we have constant back-and-forth trips to the moon. Or we could just blow it up, which might be fun in its own right: https://youtu.be/GTJ3LIA5LmA https://youtu.be/GTJ3LIA5LmA

consumer451 2y ago
As far as flights of fancy regarding the moon, I enjoyed Randall Munroe's "What if we put a pool on the moon" thought experiment. I would enjoy the experience of propelling myself out of the water like a dolphin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIBBj6KR-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIBBj6KR-Y
- zelphirkalt 2y ago
  Wouldn't you be cooked immediately?
  - consumer451 2y ago
    There might be an exact location on one of the poles where the environmental controls don't require dealing with swings of -183C to 106C every 14 days. Other radiation could be tolerated for short periods, mitigated by thick transparent domes with layers of water in between the layers?
SoftTalker 2y ago
There is no reason for humans to ever return to the moon. The cost and risks are not justified. Drones and robots can do anything that needs to be done. They don’t need to breathe, they don’t need to sleep, or eat.
- tombert 2y ago
  I think it would be cool, and I don't know that I care if there's a "reason" to do it other than "human achievement". I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on this: "Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it" I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical research or something, and those might be cool, but it would be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't there.
  - bruce511 2y ago
    When Mallory climbed on Everest (and possibly summited) it was a big deal because it had never been done. When Hilary and Tenzing did it, it pushed human achievement forward. Today people still do it, but it means nothing to anyone other than those people. Going to the moon in the 60s was an impressive feat. It pushed the boundary forward. But that's all it did. There's literally nothing of value there. Sure most of the people who saw that are dead, or will be in the next 20 years. So it will seem "cool" to the next generation. But selling "cool" to a congressional appropriations committee is a tough sell. We aren't gonna colonize the moon (or indeed mars) because frankly it would be too expensive, and there's no point. There literally is nothing to gain from a colony in either place, and there's no way to fund it (and no reason to fund it.)
    - aaronblohowiak 2y ago
      > There's literally nothing of value there. ISRU water to hydrolox to reduce amount of uplift from earth's gravity well?
      - bluGill 2y ago
        But you have to get a lot of other supplies to the moon to make use of that. Space travel will never be useful enough to pull that off. A self sustaining colony on mars is just barely possible (but I'm not sure if it is worth it), no place else in space will ever be colonized. The laws of physics are too harsh - only a "generation" ship could even leave our solar system (well you could put a child on something to leave and come back in old age without generations, but this would be pointless and unethical), and we have no reason to think those would last long enough to make the nearest star, much less one with habitable planets (which we might need to terraform). The moon lacks too much to be self sustainable. Mars is a stretch: it is likely someone will reply that mars isn't possible and they will have good points, so while I have concluded it is just possible I can see the points of those who think it is not.
- Salgat 2y ago
  Robotics is unfortunately not there yet, unless we plan to send everything there fully assembled with zero maintenance ever. Unless you mean purely for basic exploration.
- ocdtrekkie 2y ago
  But if we are to go more interesting places... shouldn't we have down breathing, eating, and sleeping on the moon so well that it isn't much of a cost or a risk? It's inherently a good testing ground for things we need to do reliably much further later. Imagine if we never built ISS because putting a space station in Earth's orbit was a solved problem...
- gorgoiler 2y ago
  Not that anyone’s offering me the choice of course but I’m happy to leave it to the robots. Lunar dust gives me the creeps. Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets ingrained into all that touches it. I don’t think I could do it due to the anxiety.
  - tombert 2y ago
    I'm too tall and I don't have twenty PhDs so I don't think "astronaut" is really on the table for me, but I would absolutely go to the moon if I had the opportunity. The dust would give me some anxiety too but I think it would be worth it.
  - kragen 2y ago
    Extremely abrasive toner that smells like gunsmoke.
- Aachen 2y ago
  Tell that to the people of deadliest catch and dirty jobs: we have robots now that can do everything we want to without needing to sleep or eat! Sadly, we're not using them because they don't exist yet...
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    They probably could exist, they’d simply be more expensive than putting a human on a boat. The relative costs are flipped for putting a human on Mars/moon - the robot is cheaper.
- lowbloodsugar 2y ago
  As a factorio player, once they added remote operation of robots to the game, I never travel back to a planet after I've got it set up. If they made it so I could land a robot, I'd never go in the first place.
- anothertroll123 2y ago
  [dead]
blast 2y ago
"I've been saying we should do this for years. I walked on the moon. Did a pushup, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?" Mr Show has held up well, maybe even gotten better with time.
owenversteeg 2y ago
Fun fact, both the US and the Soviet Union had plans to nuke the moon in the 50s. US Project A119 and Soviet Project E-4.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Those were direct results of "We just invented a hammer that is great at causing the apocalypse and are desperately looking for nails that don't cause the apocalypse." Other options include but are not limited to: Digging massive rivers/canals. Digging a massive harbor. Digging a large hole. Digging through some mountains. Digging holes to store toxic waste. Truly a revolutionary pair of projects.
robbomacrae 2y ago
I'd like to see us colonize Antártica with a self sufficient colony first. Seems like a much cheaper testbed.
floxy 2y ago
MoonBall is a great idea by HN's dr_dshiv for getting commercial funding for sports on the moon: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5VtxJdLMzLo8LFhBPJRagyWFdjY/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5Vtx...

consumer451 2y ago

As far as flights of fancy regarding the moon, I enjoyed Randall Munroe's "What if we put a pool on the moon" thought experiment. I would enjoy the experience of propelling myself out of the water like a dolphin! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIBBj6KR-Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIIBBj6KR-Y

zelphirkalt 2y ago
Wouldn't you be cooked immediately?
- consumer451 2y ago
  There might be an exact location on one of the poles where the environmental controls don't require dealing with swings of -183C to 106C every 14 days. Other radiation could be tolerated for short periods, mitigated by thick transparent domes with layers of water in between the layers?

SoftTalker 2y ago

There is no reason for humans to ever return to the moon. The cost and risks are not justified. Drones and robots can do anything that needs to be done. They don’t need to breathe, they don’t need to sleep, or eat.

tombert 2y ago
I think it would be cool, and I don't know that I care if there's a "reason" to do it other than "human achievement". I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on this: "Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it" I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical research or something, and those might be cool, but it would be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't there.
- bruce511 2y ago
  When Mallory climbed on Everest (and possibly summited) it was a big deal because it had never been done. When Hilary and Tenzing did it, it pushed human achievement forward. Today people still do it, but it means nothing to anyone other than those people. Going to the moon in the 60s was an impressive feat. It pushed the boundary forward. But that's all it did. There's literally nothing of value there. Sure most of the people who saw that are dead, or will be in the next 20 years. So it will seem "cool" to the next generation. But selling "cool" to a congressional appropriations committee is a tough sell. We aren't gonna colonize the moon (or indeed mars) because frankly it would be too expensive, and there's no point. There literally is nothing to gain from a colony in either place, and there's no way to fund it (and no reason to fund it.)
  - aaronblohowiak 2y ago
    > There's literally nothing of value there. ISRU water to hydrolox to reduce amount of uplift from earth's gravity well?
    - bluGill 2y ago
      But you have to get a lot of other supplies to the moon to make use of that. Space travel will never be useful enough to pull that off. A self sustaining colony on mars is just barely possible (but I'm not sure if it is worth it), no place else in space will ever be colonized. The laws of physics are too harsh - only a "generation" ship could even leave our solar system (well you could put a child on something to leave and come back in old age without generations, but this would be pointless and unethical), and we have no reason to think those would last long enough to make the nearest star, much less one with habitable planets (which we might need to terraform). The moon lacks too much to be self sustainable. Mars is a stretch: it is likely someone will reply that mars isn't possible and they will have good points, so while I have concluded it is just possible I can see the points of those who think it is not.
Salgat 2y ago
Robotics is unfortunately not there yet, unless we plan to send everything there fully assembled with zero maintenance ever. Unless you mean purely for basic exploration.
ocdtrekkie 2y ago
But if we are to go more interesting places... shouldn't we have down breathing, eating, and sleeping on the moon so well that it isn't much of a cost or a risk? It's inherently a good testing ground for things we need to do reliably much further later. Imagine if we never built ISS because putting a space station in Earth's orbit was a solved problem...
gorgoiler 2y ago
Not that anyone’s offering me the choice of course but I’m happy to leave it to the robots. Lunar dust gives me the creeps. Imagine stepping outside into a world where absolutely everything is coated in dark gray copy toner that gets ingrained into all that touches it. I don’t think I could do it due to the anxiety.
- tombert 2y ago
  I'm too tall and I don't have twenty PhDs so I don't think "astronaut" is really on the table for me, but I would absolutely go to the moon if I had the opportunity. The dust would give me some anxiety too but I think it would be worth it.
- kragen 2y ago
  Extremely abrasive toner that smells like gunsmoke.
Aachen 2y ago
Tell that to the people of deadliest catch and dirty jobs: we have robots now that can do everything we want to without needing to sleep or eat! Sadly, we're not using them because they don't exist yet...
- alistairSH 2y ago
  They probably could exist, they’d simply be more expensive than putting a human on a boat. The relative costs are flipped for putting a human on Mars/moon - the robot is cheaper.
lowbloodsugar 2y ago
As a factorio player, once they added remote operation of robots to the game, I never travel back to a planet after I've got it set up. If they made it so I could land a robot, I'd never go in the first place.
anothertroll123 2y ago
[dead]

blast 2y ago

"I've been saying we should do this for years. I walked on the moon. Did a pushup, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?" Mr Show has held up well, maybe even gotten better with time.

owenversteeg 2y ago

Fun fact, both the US and the Soviet Union had plans to nuke the moon in the 50s. US Project A119 and Soviet Project E-4.

mrguyorama 2y ago
Those were direct results of "We just invented a hammer that is great at causing the apocalypse and are desperately looking for nails that don't cause the apocalypse." Other options include but are not limited to: Digging massive rivers/canals. Digging a massive harbor. Digging a large hole. Digging through some mountains. Digging holes to store toxic waste. Truly a revolutionary pair of projects.

robbomacrae 2y ago

I'd like to see us colonize Antártica with a self sufficient colony first. Seems like a much cheaper testbed.

floxy 2y ago

MoonBall is a great idea by HN's dr_dshiv for getting commercial funding for sports on the moon: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5VtxJdLMzLo8LFhBPJRagyWFdjY/edit#slide=id.p https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16QpeWjf1Hbxp_15D5Vtx...