Back to the Moon

starexplorer2001 writes "Space.com is reporting that NASA's planned trip back to the Moon isn't without a significant amount of science and technological innovation. Simply 'sponging off Apollo' won't do it. Among the issues: safer human spaceflight, lunar ice, sustainability, robotic scouting missions and more. This won't be easy."

Why Then Not Now?

[foundme]

I bet this question has been asked many times, but here goes:

Why was it possible to go to the moon in '69 but not possible now even using the same old technology? Has the moon/earth/atmostphere/space changed?

One more irreverent comment

[fm6]

This won't be easy.

What, the new technology? That's easy enough — if you can get the money. That's worse than difficult — it's simply not going to happen. And GWB knows this. Of course, he also knows that he'll be safely out of office before anybody realizes that.

The last time I made that statement, I got flammed up the wazoo. Any GWB loyalists left out there?

It should be a lot cheaper than in the 60s.

[Rifter13]

They should still have the sets around somewhere, and I think today's CGI is FAR better than what they had in the 60s! On a more serious note, I saw a report several years ago, showing that for every $1 paid into NASA, $9 came back into the economy by way of R&D advances, and taking those advances to market. Not to mention, the amount of cutting-edge medical knowlege and equipment that has come from the space program. It is very dumb, not to fund bleeding edge technology to go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

Re:Moon Base Bush is pie in the sky

[trout007]

NASA is hiring many Apollo engineers back as consultants to help with this. These guys did a lot with basic engineering skills and great common sence and a WHOLE lot of testing. Many are alive and in their late 60's.

Re:Moon Base Bush is pie in the sky

[kimvette]

Actually NASA has a lot more to offer than just ISS. They also conduct experiments in aircraft technology. Even if we were to abandon space "exploration" (read: taxpayer expenditures) altogether, NASA would still have a very good reason to exist. I for one do not wish for aviation technology to stagnate - especially technology available to general aviation.

Re:Why Then Not Now?

[tpemble]

Yes, I actually have one of the mirrors, but not used. They have a right angle so that no matter which way you look into it you see yourself.. it's quite fun to stare into because the image is "mirrored" from the image you'd expect in a conventional mirror.. say, blink your left eye and see the right one blink in the mirror.

Re:Back?

[PeelBoy]

Anybody who thinks we didn't is a fucking retard.

Everything conspiracy theorists have come up with on this topic have been EASILY shot down.

It's not even worth trying to argue about anymore. There is proof out there but people just don't feel like doing any real research.

You'd think if we staged the whole thing the Russians would have said SOMETHING about it seeing that they listened in to the ENTIRE FREAKING MISSION as did the rest of the world.

Re:Why Then Not Now?

[R3d M3rcury]

I suppose it's my turn to play troll. Personally, I believe we landed on the moon, but it's always a fun debate.

"Didn't they stick a mirror up there for astronomers to be able to reflect off of to get a very accurate distance between the earth/moon?"

We certainly did. The question is, did men place it there?

I hear this one alot. We obviously went to the moon because Apollo astronauts placed mirrors on the moon which reflect back to Earth. How do we know that Apollo astronauts placed these on the moon? Because we saw them do it on our TVs.

If we accept the argument that the reason that NASA didn't really send men to the moon because the men would die, this does not mean that NASA couldn't send things to the moon. I haven't heard anyone say that the Surveyor missions were faked. So if we go with that, NASA landed mirrors on the moon to coincide with the Apollo missions. These could have been remotely adjusted from Earth.

Again, I'm not saying we didn't land on the moon. I'm just saying that the mirrors don't necessarily prove that we did.

Re:Bout Time

[Larthallor]

In the last 500 million years of life, not one of the "great extinctions" even came close to turning the Earth into a dry, frozen world with little or no atmosphere. And yet, you seem to think that putting people on just such worlds (the Moon, Mars) are going to help? That makes zero sense.

First things first, the liklihood of a catastrophe large enough to wipe out humanity is geologically small. The most likely forms for such catastrophe would be man-made, such as nuclear or biological war and even these aren't likely to wipe out humanity by themselves. We can afford to wait a very long time for technology to make colonies cheaper and more practical.

Second, for the forseeable future, any Lunar or Martian colonies will be dependent on a healthy Earth to supply them. If Earth gets wiped out, these colonies are all dead within a generation. It will take a great while before we have the technological and financial ability to create truly self-sufficient colonies on Mars and even longer to do so on the Moon. In the meantime, you're wasting your survival money.

Third, any disaster that could threaten an unprotected humanity here on Earth could be better (and much more cheaply) survived by building self-contained shelters/cities here on Earth. If you really want to prevent a calamity from wiping out humanity, it is much easier and cheaper to build Terran colonies than Martian ones.

Here on Earth, a Terran colony would only have to be self-contained until the conditions improved enough to go outside again. Even if that is 50-100 years, it's much better than on Mars or the Moon, where it is never going to get better. A more realistic scenario would have a staged recovery on Earth, with full self-containment only necessary for a short period of time, if at all. Maybe you would only have to be entirely self-contained for 5 years, after which you could start to pull in filtered air and water from the surface while you continue to shelter in the colony. That's not possible anywhere else in the Solar System.

Let's review what Earth would offer would-be survivalists only months after an asteroid strike of the proportions that wiped out the dinosaurs:

1. Ideal gravity
2. Ideal atmosphere
3. Abundant liquid water
4. Ideal soil conditions
5. Ideal temperature
6. Ideal Solar flux
7. Zero travel costs

The rest of the Solar System is a very inhospitible place to live, let alone raise children and flourish. Even an Earth ruined by war, global warming, or impact is literally a "hospitable sustaining womb" relative to any other place in the Solar System and can not be beat. It may not help you get to see Mars in your lifetime, but the best place to escape a catastrophe on Earth is Earth.

Re:understatement of the year

[buddyglass]

And why do I care about sending people to other planets?

My poing being, if I want the most scientific bang for my buck, sending someone to the moon is not the way to go. Sure, we might learn some more things about space travel. So what. That's of limited utility. I'd rather solve the problems on this planet first, or at least make a dent.

Re:Bout Time

[khallow]

While you have the best form of this argument I've seen, it still sucks. First things first, the liklihood of a catastrophe large enough to wipe out humanity is geologically small. The most likely forms for such catastrophe would be man-made, such as nuclear or biological war and even these aren't likely to wipe out humanity by themselves. We can afford to wait a very long time for technology to make colonies cheaper and more practical.

I don't see why we should gamble that nuclear or biological war won't wipe out the human race. Your assurances are after all worthless. And even if humanity can survive any such event doesn't mean that all cultures will.

Also, there are other types of human catastrophes. For example, a stagnant global government (particularly something along the lines of a "hydraulic empire" [wikipedia.org] might be stable on geological time scales. Runaway global warming is another potential threat.

Second, for the forseeable future, any Lunar or Martian colonies will be dependent on a healthy Earth to supply them. If Earth gets wiped out, these colonies are all dead within a generation. It will take a great while before we have the technological and financial ability to create truly self-sufficient colonies on Mars and even longer to do so on the Moon. In the meantime, you're wasting your survival money.

As I see it, you seem to think now is not a good time, but some hypothetical future will be a good time. What's the criteria you're using here?

There will be a period of dependency no matter when the colony is started. We don't even know how much gravity a human needs, Mars and the Moon might not be inhabitable by us in our current forms. But we won't know until we try. Therefore, it isn't a good reason to *delay* the creation of a colony. After all, the sooner we get started, the sooner we understand just what is needed, the sooner a colony is established, and the sooner it will become self-reliant.

And once a colony is self-reliant, your whole argument is irrelevant.

Third, any disaster that could threaten an unprotected humanity here on Earth could be better (and much more cheaply) survived by building self-contained shelters/cities here on Earth. If you really want to prevent a calamity from wiping out humanity, it is much easier and cheaper to build Terran colonies than Martian ones.

As I noted before, there are disasters (like stagnant world governments stable on geological time scales) that can only be avoided by not being on Earth.

Here on Earth, a Terran colony would only have to be self-contained until the conditions improved enough to go outside again. Even if that is 50-100 years, it's much better than on Mars or the Moon, where it is never going to get better. A more realistic scenario would have a staged recovery on Earth, with full self-containment only necessary for a short period of time, if at all. Maybe you would only have to be entirely self-contained for 5 years, after which you could start to pull in filtered air and water from the surface while you continue to shelter in the colony. That's not possible anywhere else in the Solar System.

But it doesn't need to be anywhere near as good as Earth on Mars or the Moon. Let me add that an Earth-based self-contained colony has little value outside of disaster insurance while space colonies will be able to provide a considerable supply of scientific data and adaptation to extreme environments even if nothing else. Frankly, I think most industry will end up in space. There's no ecology to destroy there and plenty of mass, energy, and space for making things.

Earth will likely remain a better place for humans to live than anywhere else in the Solar System, but it need not stay that way.

The rest of the Solar System is a very inhospitible place to live, let alone raise children and flourish. Even an Earth ruined by war, global warming, or impact is literally a "hospitable s