I’m for ANY plan to get out into space, even if it came from GW Bush’s ignorant mouth.
But we are far, far from exhausting exploration by remote controlled vehicles and robots.
His “we need to see, we need to touch” proposition at this point in history is a proposal for high cost and high death risk.
“He’s given up on planet Earth.” --the Daily Show
As has been discussed, if you aren’t actually obtaining any resources there, if all you’re doing is hauling stuff from Earth to the Moon, waiting, and moving on, then it’s hugely wasteful. It would be like driving from New Hampshire to Florida and stopping to rest and refuel in Idaho.
Bull.
How would one man carry 500 pounds of stuff up a flight of stairs? Would he…
A: Carry it all in one trip…
Or…
B: Make ten trips carrying 50 pounds each time?
The plan to launch from the Moon follows the same ideal. We can’t launch a full-built Mars-bound ship straight from Earth’s surface. THAT would be wasteful. Either way, we’d be putting the thing into orbit piecemeal, which means that we either put the pieces together in orbit, or on the Moon. Orbit, at first, seems like a better idea… until you remember how HARD it is to move in microgravity. The manpower you’d use for construction would be limited to three or four guys at a time, at most, they’d be encumbered by huge, bulky MMU’s, and the use of fuel during construction would be cost prohibitive.
On the other hand, by constructing a permanent settlement on the Moon, you can get a larger body of manpower, moving would be simplified, heavier construction equipment can be used, and the support base would be more reliable. Plus, you CAN get raw materials from the Moon, even though they’re limited… try pulling oxygen out of a hard vacuum.
What Spoofe said.
Several dozen trips to the moon to build the landing dock and bring up enough fuel to get from the Moon Mars is all that I`m suggesting. Once that stuff is in place THEN launch the Mars ship, have it resupply and re-fuel on the Moon then go from there.
Makes all the sense in the world to me. I think you missed something…?
Problems with a permanent manned moon base? Perhaps the fact that anyone who stays there for a little too long can never return to Earth as their body will become too frail - bones will thin and muscles will atrophy in the low gravity. (I am not sure about time fram here, but I am thinking that anything past about a year means you’re never coming back).
Spoofe makes a good point about the diffculties of orbital contsruction, but perhpas a moon base would have to be run by robots…?
This being GQ, you’ll have to provide a cite for that claim. While the effects of microgravity on bone remodelling are well known, if not understood, I’m not aware of any evidence that calcium loss occurs in gravitational fields as strong as the moon’s. The same goes for your claim about muscle wasting. As far as I know, there’s no practical way for earth bound researchers to even approach the problem, if it is a problem.
Unfrotunately, Squink a preliminary perusal of google leaves me without any specific cites. i.e. there is plenty of information, as you pointed out, of the effect of microgravity, but none too specific about long periods spent on the moon.
I actually read an article about a similar problem being anticipated with travel to Mars. I no longer have the article and one would have to pay a nominal fee to retrieve it off the website (www.smh.com.au “To lose weight, go to Mars, and stay there”). The gist of the article is that people who go to Mars, will never come back, due to low gravity on the planet itself and in transit.
I can, however, respond to most of your criticisms:
Obviously there is no evidence of calcium loss in the moon gravity environment - such a study would have to be done on the moon! And we haven’t been there for a long time… Any effects on the bones and muscles from previous moon missions would be indistinguishable from the time spent in space travel.
But use some common sense here: The moon has gravity one sixth that of the Earth. Anyone who has lifted weights (or even been overweight for that matter) can tell you that as soon as you take the constant load off your muscles, they immediately begin to atrophy. Ditto for bones.
But I do apologise for being unable to come up with a cite.
As for Earthbound researchers being unable to approach the problem - I agree with you there. I vote Robo-power.