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What would we find up there that we didn't find last time with a new moon mission? EDIT: I guess the assumption about basketball played on the moon is that mos
by tokenadult 12y ago
What would we find up there that we didn't find last time with a new moon mission?
EDIT: I guess the assumption about basketball played on the moon is that most of us would watch that on television. But how much would a team have to make in TV advertising revenues to recover the cost of sending athletes to the moon and keeping them alive there? (A similar question applies to the costs of running the Olympics on the moon.) Ladies and gentlemen, those are fun jokes, but is this kind of joking response going to prompt anyone to invest their own money in a moon mission?
- jacquesm 12y agoIt's not what we would find up there it is what we could do up there. For one we could set up a lunar observatory.
- hugs 12y agoGravity on the Moon is 1/6th the gravity of the Earth. Re-inventing every sport to take advantage of this could be pretty fun. Who wouldn't want to see a basketball game played inside an arena on the Moon?
- TeMPOraL 12y agoHosting Olympics on the Moon to bankroll a Lunar observatory... this is one hell of a nice idea :).
- hugs 12y agoInspired by this thread, I just whipped up a funny idea for a sci-fi-ish book: "Tranquility Base Hotel" https://gist.github.com/hugs/198e37dd75f814723c14 https://gist.github.com/hugs/198e37dd75f814723c14
- dalke 12y agoWhat could a lunar observatory do that an orbiting one like the planned James Webb Space Telescope or the proposed Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope couldn't?
- jacquesm 12y agoStay aloft indefinitely (or at least, for our purposes indefinitely). Satellite based telescopes will always have a limited life-span, either they end up dropping too low and de-orbiting or they run out of aiming propellant.
- dalke 12y ago"Aloft" is a bit of a misnomer, I believe, for something sitting on the Moon. Both of the space telescopes I mentioned are targeted for L2, which is well beyond the Moon's orbit, so there's no chance they'll de-orbit. I believe they use reaction wheels for pointing, not propellant, but as L2 is not stable, you're right that it needs some fuel for station keeping. On the other hand, the Moon has quakes, and large temperature swings. Wouldn't that be much easier to set up an effectively stationary sunshield for the stillness of L2 instead? Plus, the Moon blocks out about 1/2 the sky, which seems like it might limit what you can do.
- jacquesm 12y ago> "Aloft" is a bit of a misnomer, I believe, for something sitting on the Moon. Sure :) But it's attaching something to a satellite rather than launching a satellite. After all, the moon is a satellite of the earth, but a natural one rather than an artificial one.
- dalke 12y agoI still don't see what science objectives it could do better than one of the ones proposed for L2.
- jacquesm 12y agoReally long term observations without atmospheric distortion, really long baseline stuff with very precisely defined distances between the various elements. I'm not an astronomer but there have been quite a few proposals for such observatories, all have been shot down on practical grounds, not on grounds of not having some kind of benefit. There has been talk of very large liquid based mirrors (limited in size on earth), the far side of the moon is free from radio interference from the earth and a bunch of other proposals. All of them were shot down based on a very simple observation: we don't have people on the moon, nor do we have a power plant or a way to install this stuff or assemble it out of pieces after landing it there. But that might change.
- hugs 12y agoMoney. I think we should build hotels there and make it a tourist attraction. For many countries, their main source of revenue is tourism. Why not the moon, too?
- soperj 12y agoWell I'm sure there were a lot of lessons learned in the 70s that have been completely forgotten by now w/r to having a man in space on another celestial body. Could certainly learn a lot about staying alive for an extended period of time on another planet.
- sp332 12y agoWho cares? We'd have people on the moon! :) Anyway, there have been a grand total of less than one full man-day of moonwalks. You think we discovered everything interesting in that amount of time? For starters, how about sampling all that comet debris on the poles. It seems easier than sending probes like Rosetta on 10-year comet-chasing missions.
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoWell, maybe faster. Not easier. People require vast life-support systems (most of the payload weight). Can't beat a probe for efficiency.