There’s something I can’t understand. President Bush I hear is thinking of one day establishing a permanent human presence on the moon. First, why? What will this do? Second, who? Who will this person be who will willingly agree or want to move to this planet? I’m glad he shot down Saddam. But the person who’d leave earth to go to the moon (at least I know if it were me) I’d consider kind of a strange bird indeed. By the way…is there an area code or a zip code for outer space (like for the Mir Station)? Now I know that most if not all communications are done through Nasa and other stations here on earth but are there any? Thanks and see you later.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut so bad I could taste it. It wasn’t until the Air Force demonstrated to me that flabby white guys do not, in fact, have the Right Stuff that I gave up all hope.
My psyche was so damaged from the experience that I became a clown instead.
Do you think the moon base will have room for a clown? In HR perhaps, or upper management?
I think the idea of a permanent base on the moon is as a ‘launchpad’ for a mission to Mars.
Well, technically, the moon isn’t a planet. It’s a natural satellite.
It’s not like a solitary person is going to take up permanent residence on the moon here. It would certainly be a group of people who rotate between being on earth and lunar duty, just like with the space station.
No.
I suppose that if, in the future, we wanted to send mail to people on the moon, we’d just send it to something like:
Block D Apt 24
Armstrong Dome
Mare Tranquillitatis
Luna
Like porkchop, I’d have loved to go to the moon, or Mars, or just to travel in space. Like porkchop, I am of an age and physical condition that this will never happen. Heck, when I was young and fit, they didn’t want persons of my gender anyway.
I’d do it in a second. It would help if they sent up a cute girl too, but I’m willing to make do with porn if I get to be the first lunar colonist…
<obligatory cynical political humour>Perhaps political opponents will be top of the list?</ocph> 
[QUOTE=dopetalker]
… Second, who? Who will this person be who will willingly agree or want to move to this planet? … /QUOTE]
Ranger Gord.
I’m going to vote this to be speculative and potentially political, rather than questions with specific answers, and so it’s being moved to Great Debates.
Bush is probably doing this for political reasons. As for who, there are any number of people who would want to colonize or simply move to a new planet or satellite. I’d be willing to go, under certain conditions, but they probably wouldn’t take me. And yes, many people DO consider me to be quite strange. This no longer bothers me. As for area codes and zip codes, those are classifications used by commercial mail or phone carriers. So far, we have no commercial phone or mail services that will deliver/give service off the face of the Earth.
To expound upon your first question, WHY? We don’t know what we’ll find on the moon. We don’t know what sorts of new technology we’ll develop to use. However, pure research always pays off in the long run. It could also be viewed as an insurance policy…think about the dinosaur-killing meteorite. Then think about what would happen when one strikes the Earth again. And don’t fool yourself, one WILL strike the Earth again, it’s just a question of time, and how well prepared we are to handle it.
I predict some kind of black obelisk thingy.
I’d be happy, no, make that thrilled to live on the moon.
Who would go?? Lots of folks. As an example though, same folks that go and live in antartica for long periods, or go up in space stations. Lots of people would be willing…hell eager…to go. I see a moon base a lot like our bases in antartica…scientific research stations, possibly with a large telescope as well. I don’t see it as some kind of spring board to Mars. To do Mars I think its more likely to do it in stages, sending a lot of the things over BEFORE we ever send the people…and to me its more logical to do this from Earth orbit than from the moon. The moon CAN teach us a lot about the creating of such a station though, as well as perfect a reliable interplanetary shuttle, IMO…but it should be done for itself, not as part of some greater plan to go to Mars.
-XT
I’d go. Yesterday, if it were possible.
I am ready to bet that there will no moon base in the next 20 years. I guess Bush reads the SDMB regularly and can’t believe that anybody actually believes what he says.
A few years ago, when I realized I would never walk on the moon, I got really really depressed.
As for a reason why…
Just plain pride. It’s time the human race did something it can be proud of again.
I think if somebody told me “YOU, you’re going to the Moon!” I’d probably burst into tears of joy. I cannot think of a single thing I could possibly experience in my life that would top such a journey. I’d willingly risk life and limb for it (within reason…I’d have to know they were at least trying to get me there in one piece). Maybe I am totally nuts, as you seem to suggest, but I’d be one happy lunatic on the Moon.
As for why, well, there are the good reasons, and then there are the resons Dubya probably wants to do it for. I’ll stick to the good reasons, since, even if the Prez’s reasons suck, as long as somebody can hijack the grandstand with some real science, it makes the thing pretty worthwhile.
The gravity of the Moon is 1/6 that of the Earth. The lunar crust is rich in silicates, as well as metals like aluminum and titanium. Imagine you want to build a telescope. If one thing is true about optics, it’s true that big is more. The bigger the lense and reflector you can build, the more photons you can gather and focus on your camera, the fainter the object you can see, the higher the resolving power. With materials you can litterally dig up from the soil, you could build a telescope that could easily be two or three times as big as anything that would collapse under its own weight on Earth. Add to that a sky that is totally without light polution and atomospheric distortion. An instrument light this would make the Hubble Space Telescope look like a pair of binoculars. You could see the finest structures of Quasars, you could look at planets around other stars, you could gaze at the birth of the visible Universe with a level of detail many orders of magnitude greater than any instrument we have today. In the cold, lightless craters of the Lunar poles, infrared telescopes could map the cosmic background radiation with fantastic resolution, without even having to resort to active cooling. No radio noise, and you could build a dish as big as Aricebo, yet with all the motility of smaller dishes like the ones that make up the VLA. Imagine a VLA made up of Aricebo-sized dishes. What could we see with such a device? Who knows?
Man, I could go on and on. A human presence on the Moon, at the very least, might be the start of a Golden Age of astronomical research. Some of the most fundamental questions about life on other planets, the beginning of the universe, and much more, might then be within our power to answer with unprecedented rigor.
Just for starters.
Based on these questions of yours, I truly believe that you are on dope.
So that we have a base up there.
We’ll have a permanent base there for research, etc. BTW, this is not a new idea. Bush has never had a new idea.
OK, you’re joking, right? It’s not the same person for life, dummy! It’s just that there would always be someone at the base.
Astronauts.
No zip code. I don’t know if you could radio the moon yourself.
Besides, why would you need a zipcode? I’m pretty sure that the way to get mail up there, would be through email, using an established datalink.
After all, the transmission lag between the Earth and the Moon is fairly miniscule compared to the one between the Earth and Mars.
Christ, sign me up. When I was eight (on July 20, 1969) I vowed to myself I’d someday walk on the Moon. I thought that by the 21st century they’d have a fence around Tranquillity Base to keep the tourists from trampling all over it.
Why go? Primarily because adventure and exploration are what make the human species interesting for me. If we’re not pushing the frontier, we’re barely living.
And once we really start exploring the Moon and the things we can build and do there and throughout the Earth-Moon system… after a few decades, people would wonder why the hell we waited so long.