# "Fly me to the moon" would you go? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 28, 2017, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009 "2017-02-28T03:53:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/41 "2017-03-01T00:07:41Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > I don’t see the appeal. Basically I’d be paying someone to torture me for a week so I can see pictures I could download off the internet. > > It’s the difference between watching the Superbowl game in the comfort of home with all the closeup camera shots or… not. as someone who takes few pictures of things, I can say that IMO I’d much rather have the wonder of the experience. I’d much rather watch the Red Wings from a seat at Joe Louis Arena and get the noise, crowd camaraderie, and energy than sit on my couch and watch them on TV. I’d much rather be _in_ the capsule hurtling around the moon and seeing it than look at pictures of the moon. ---
**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/42 "2017-03-01T00:30:40Z")
I’d love to go on the “money is no object” condition. They’d be unlikely to accept a person of my age and medical history, though. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/43 "2017-03-01T00:47:48Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > as someone who takes few pictures of things, I can say that IMO I’d much rather have the wonder of the experience. I’d much rather watch the Red Wings from a seat at Joe Louis Arena and get the noise, crowd camaraderie, and energy than sit on my couch and watch them on TV. I’d much rather be _in_ the capsule hurtling around the moon and seeing it than look at pictures of the moon. To each his own. It’s not an argument to disagree with you but I don’t enjoy long flights in airplanes. This is a week-long trip with 2 views: one of the earth and one of the moon. The cool factor dies quickly compared to the travel time. Different strokes. ---
**Author:** ![mikecurtis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mikecurtis/32/3284_2.png) [@mikecurtis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mikecurtis)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/44 "2017-03-01T02:07:32Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > . . . . All of us will share the cost of raising children orphaned by the inevitable space mission that ends in tragedy. We don’t exist in isolation from each other, any senseless death hurts all of us. we ask people everyday to put themselves in harms way for our benefit: police, emergency responders, soldiers, just to name a few. i am happy to share in the financial risk that their physical risk entails. death or injury has long gone hand in hand with exploration. and while tragic, it is not senseless. as wise people throughout the ages have expressed; we are explorers, thats what we do. and this exploration has contributed immensely to our growth. we will all benefit from space exploration, why shouldnt we share the financial risk? @ **stranger on a train** do you think youre the only one whose noticed these problems? do you think youre the only one whose concerned? do you think that noone is trying to mitigate these problems? i’m the first to point out that business often sacrifice safety for the bottom line, but spacex and others rely on investment to be successful. they have no product to sell, if they kill off their investors what do they have left? i’m pretty sure theyre motivated to minimize these risks. mc ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/45 "2017-03-01T02:11:58Z")
> [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](#): > > Aeschines, why is this irresponsible? As long as all parties involved know the dangers, why should I be allowed to decide if I want to take the risks if I’m making an informed decision? First, **Stranger on a Train’s** comments were truly excellent. Consider those, and consider this: Space exploration is still in its infancy. I repeat: _infancy._ Only the US has gotten to the moon. The Apollo missions are a stunning human achievement and, when you get down to it, a historical anomaly. Why do you think we haven’t been to the moon since 1972? Or even doing anything at the Apollo 8 level (1968)? Because it remains a huge technological challenge. The Soviet space program achieved a lot as well. The EU has done some important stuff. Beyond these, only China has reached even the Gemini level of development. SpaceX is going to kill some people when it does manned space flights. Guaranteed. We have not built on Apollo since 1972. We are just now trying to get back to that level of technology. That sounds weird to us in 2017, with our smartphones and advances in so many other areas of life, but it’s true. The Soviets and the US made a very odd and anomalous advance in space exploration in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, and advances in this domain have been largely stagnant since then. Soliciting the participation of space tourists at this juncture is simply inappropriate and arrogant. I don’t care what documents they sign, if you know you’re going to kill some people (and they _should_ know), you don’t take their money. It’s that simple. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/46 "2017-03-01T02:31:54Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > We are just now trying to get back to that level of technology. That sounds weird to us in 2017, with our smartphones and advances in so many other areas of life, but it’s true. That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Materials science, computing (both control systems AND modeling) and many other things are drastically better than they were back in the 1960s. And it’s not like we haven’t been continuously launching both manned and unmanned rockets for the intervening time. 135 Shuttle missions and nearly 20 years of the ISS have probably taught us as much about spaceflight as the 10 Apollo missions that went to the moon. The ONLY thing that we had back then that we no longer have is a super-heavy lift rocket of the scale of the Saturn V, and that’s more a consequence of not having a mission for something so large, not a consequence of some kind of technological dark-age in rocketry. Not that it makes Stranger’s commentary any less true, but saying that we’re only now getting back to where we were is flat-out wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/47 "2017-03-01T02:49:26Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > The good people at SpaceX have declared [a goal](http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/02/27/SpaceX-says-it-will-fly-civilians-to-the-moon-next-year/6381488232815/) to land two private citizens on the moon next year. If money wasn’t a factor would you be willing to go up on their maiden voyage? What about one soon after? Ever? I couldn’t be ready fast enough. I’d go if I had, say, a 50% chance of getting back. My name isn’t Harriman, but it should have been. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/48 "2017-03-01T02:51:21Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Materials science, computing (both control systems AND modeling) and many other things are drastically better than they were back in the 1960s. > > And it’s not like we haven’t been continuously launching both manned and unmanned rockets for the intervening time. 135 Shuttle missions and nearly 20 years of the ISS have probably taught us as much about spaceflight as the 10 Apollo missions that went to the moon. > > The ONLY thing that we had back then that we no longer have is a super-heavy lift rocket of the scale of the Saturn V, and that’s more a consequence of not having a mission for something so large, not a consequence of some kind of technological dark-age in rocketry. > > Not that it makes Stranger’s commentary any less true, but saying that we’re only now getting back to where we were is flat-out wrong. All this is may be true technically but rockets operate on a razor thin envelope of mechanical success. what works on paper doesn’t necessarily work with a million lbs of thrust moving something from zero to 17,000 mph into the deep freeze of space. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/49 "2017-03-01T03:10:38Z")
> [@bump](#): > > That makes no sense whatsoever to me. Materials science, computing (both control systems AND modeling) and many other things are drastically better than they were back in the 1960s. > **[We choose to go to the Moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_Moon)** > > "We choose to go to the Moon", formally the Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, was a speech on September 12, 1962 by United States President John F. Kennedy to bolster public support for his proposal to land a man on the Moon before 1970 and bring him safely back to Earth. Kennedy gave the speech, largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen, to a large crowd at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas. In his speech, Kennedy characterized s... **The “Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort”, or better known simply as the “We choose to go to the moon” speech, was delivered by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in front of a large crowd gathered at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas on September 12, 1962. It was one of Kennedy’s earlier speeches meant to persuade the American people to support the national effort to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth.** We are in a much better position to go to the moon in 2017 than in 1962, but being in a position to do something is different than actually doing it. We haven’t been to the moon since 1972. If we were to decide to go back to the moon, how long would it take us to get there? If we went all out, probably a few years, maybe ten. > [@](#): > > And it’s not like we haven’t been continuously launching both manned and unmanned rockets for the intervening time. 135 Shuttle missions and nearly 20 years of the ISS have probably taught us as much about spaceflight as the 10 Apollo missions that went to the moon. True, but you know how it goes. You can do 50 5k runs and still not be anywhere ready to do a marathon. To do the marathon, you’ve got to train for the marathon or have past marathon experience. Yes, the 5k experience is useful but is still categorically different. > [@](#): > > The ONLY thing that we had back then that we no longer have is a super-heavy lift rocket of the scale of the Saturn V, and that’s more a consequence of not having a mission for something so large, not a consequence of some kind of technological dark-age in rocketry. But that’s a BIG thing! Along with actually having the tech on hand is having a culture that understands and supports that tech on hand. We don’t have that. We use Soviet-era Soyuz rockets to get to the ISS, after all. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/50 "2017-03-01T05:52:09Z")
I’d be in. Space tourism sounds awesome and frankly I think we’re well past the point where we should have lunar colonies etc. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/51 "2017-03-01T12:31:22Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Only the US has gotten to the moon. The Apollo missions are a stunning human achievement and, when you get down to it, a historical anomaly. Why do you think we haven’t been to the moon since 1972? Or even doing anything at the Apollo 8 level (1968)? Because it remains a huge technological challenge. that’s not really it. the entire motivation for the Apollo program was “_get to the moon before those goddamned Reds do!_” and we achieved that. After that, public interest waned and there wasn’t much justification to spend that much money on further missions. and the technological hurdles today are _minor_ compared to back then. Space-worthy computers today are orders of magnitude more powerful than what they used in the '60s even though not nearly state of the art today. But apart from that, how much have rockets changed since then? not much. We’ve been using the same rocket motor design for 50 years because it works and there’s nothing better. advances in materials science have made them more reliable. we haven’t gone back to the moon since 1972 because we haven’t had a compelling reason to spend the money to do so. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/52 "2017-03-01T13:02:41Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > For the same reason why we put rails on the Grand Canyon observation points. Or don’t let you make cars without air bags. When you take unnecessary risks with your own life, you’re gambling with all of our lives. That guy who feels the need to ride a motorcycle without a helmet- all of us pay for his injuries and the demands they place on the health care system. All of us will share the cost of raising children orphaned by the inevitable space mission that ends in tragedy. We don’t exist in isolation from each other, any senseless death hurts all of us. Yeah maybe but we don’t gots to pay for it like car crashes without seatbelts and airbags or motorcycle wrecks without helmets. The folks that do this–if it doesn’t work out, they get cancelled real good. ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/53 "2017-03-01T14:12:53Z")
Nope. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/54 "2017-03-01T14:36:40Z")
[quote=“Aeschines, post:49, topic:781009”] We are in a much better position to go to the moon in 2017 than in 1962, but being in a position to do something is different than actually doing it. We haven’t been to the moon since 1972. If we were to decide to go back to the moon, how long would it take us to get there? If we went all out, probably a few years, maybe ten.[/.QUOTE] Logically, I don’t see how a ten year time frame makes any sense. The USA went all out to get to the moon before, and it took about ten years - it depends when you start counting from, but it was basically a decade. Obviously **if the USA went “all out” now** - so we are assuming total dedication by the feds in giving NASA just huge piles of money - it would take FAR less time. The process of going to the moon in the 1960s involved basically a ten-year-long experiment of absolutely staggering monetary cost in every aspect of the process; launching things into space, recovering them from space, getting spacecraft to dock in orbit, and learning how to put humans in space and get them back alive. A whole space mission was dedicate to “let’s see if fuel cells work.” Today you could skip the equivalents of the Mercury and Gemini programs and just just straight into the Apollo process, and do so knowing full well what’s involved in building the ships that will get you to the Moon, let you land there, and return. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/55 "2017-03-01T15:11:51Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > We are in a much better position to go to the moon in 2017 than in 1962, but being in a position to do something is different than actually doing it. We haven’t been to the moon since 1972. If we were to decide to go back to the moon, how long would it take us to get there? If we went all out, probably a few years, maybe ten. Try two to four. [http://spacenews.com/nasa-study-to-examine-crewed-slsorion-mission-in-2019/](http://spacenews.com/nasa-study-to-examine-crewed-slsorion-mission-in-2019/) The original plan was to send the Orion capsule around the moon Apollo 8 style in 2021 (4 years from now), but they’re talking about moving that forward. The plan is to use the Space Launch System (a super-heavy lift rocket similar to the Saturn V). Like I was saying, it’s not like NASA has been sitting on their hands this entire time. They started work on this in 2011-ish, so it’s been six years thus far, and will be in the 8-10 year time frame when all is said and done, which is right in line with what it took to design that sort of rocket and capsule system the first time around. However, I suspect it took NASA a lot less money (there’s less floating around these days) to do it this time around. In that vein, NASA currently gets about 0.5% of the federal budget. In the space race years, they got between about 1.2% and 3.5% of the \*entire \*Federal budget. I suspect that if we threw between 2x and 7x the amount of money at NASA that we’re currently spending, they’d get a lot more done a lot faster. They’re planning fairly ambitious stuff like robotically redirecting an asteroid into lunar orbit, and sending a crew to investigate it there. There are even more interesting missions proposed- near-earth asteroid missions, Mars missions, and even Venus missions. I don’t know where you get the idea that NASA has been sitting around doing nothing since 1972; they just haven’t been launching manned missions since 2011. Prior to that, during the Shuttle era they put four times as many manned missions (135) up as they put up during the entirety of the Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz projects (32). The main reason they’ve been using the Soyuz rockets out of Russia for ISS missions is because the Russians have them available, they’re relatively cheap, and the US didn’t have a man-rated rocket after the Shuttle. I’m sure that we could have tweaked the Delta IV Heavy or Atlas 5 to be man-rated, but that probably would have cost more than just paying the Russians to launch them into LEO, which is something the Soyuz can do without an issue, even though it’s a 60 year old design. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/56 "2017-03-01T15:38:09Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Logically, I don’t see how a ten year time frame makes any sense. The USA went all out to get to the moon before, and it took about ten years - it depends when you start counting from, but it was basically a decade. One place to start counting would be Kennedy’s ‘man on the moon by 1970’ speech, May 25, 1961. We managed it in just over 8 years - at a time when, as you imply, we were doing everything from scratch: this was just three and a half years after the Russians had launched Sputnik, after all. Really, this was an incredibly amazing feat: from pre-Sputnik to ‘holy shit, man walks on fucking moon’ in less than a dozen years. I don’t think even a crash program could get us back to the moon in much less than two years, simply because it would take that long to build all the machines and processes specific to building the rockets and lunar modules, and then build the rockets and lunar modules themselves. So I’d agree with you that two years would be about the minimum. And three or four years would be better, to make sure everything was properly built and fully tested and inspected and safe. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/57 "2017-03-01T15:52:57Z")
> [@Martini\_Enfield](#): > > I’d be in. Space tourism sounds awesome and frankly I think we’re well past the point where we should have lunar colonies etc. ‘Should’ is doing a lot of work here. _Why_ should we have lunar colonies now, other than that all the SF stories I grew up on 50 years ago assumed we would by now? > [@jz78817](#): > > we haven’t gone back to the moon since 1972 because we haven’t had a compelling reason to spend the money to do so. Bingo. And really, the only moderately compelling reason I can think of for anyone to have gone back relatively recently, or to go back sometime soon, would be if a rising power (China, maybe?) wanted to show off their technological chops. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/58 "2017-03-01T15:53:52Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Try two to four. > > [http://spacenews.com/nasa-study-to-examine-crewed-slsorion-mission-in-2019/](http://spacenews.com/nasa-study-to-examine-crewed-slsorion-mission-in-2019/) > > The original plan was to send the Orion capsule around the moon Apollo 8 style in 2021 (4 years from now), but they’re talking about moving that forward. The plan is to use the Space Launch System (a super-heavy lift rocket similar to the Saturn V). they can get around some of the challenges related to the Saturn V’s sheer size with their planned solid rocket boosters. SRBs solve a lot of problems, but admittedly bring some of their own. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/59 "2017-03-01T16:04:48Z")
> [@Aeschines](#): > > Why do you think we haven’t been to the moon since 1972? Because we’ve been there 6 times already. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2017, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009/60 "2017-03-01T16:09:40Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > ‘Should’ is doing a lot of work here. _Why_ should we have lunar colonies now, other than that all the SF stories I grew up on 50 years ago assumed we would by now? I think sci-fi gives people a far too “romantic” picture of what life in space or on the moon (or Mars) would be like. in sci-fi, ships traveling through space are large, open, and luxurious with wide, carpeted halls, and large living quarters. **edit:** and of course, fuel which never runs out. in reality, such a ship would be much more like a [submarine.](http://www.businessinsider.com/17-incredible-photos-of-life-on-a-us-navy-submarine-2015-1) small, cramped, smelly, dark. I doubt any living facilities on the moon or Mars would be anywhere nearly as nice and spacious as even the research facilities we have on Antarctica. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fly-me-to-the-moon-would-you-go/781009.md?page=4)