As one who believes that NASA has made 6 (I think) successful landings on the moon during the years 1969-72. I have a few questions for some of those people who are in the know about the whole process.
Were there any moon landings by the United States since 1972? If so when? If not, Why not?
Are there plans for permanent installations on the moon? Bio-sphere type installations?
What are the pros and cons of lunar installations? Are there more cons than pros…(why no recent activity on a satelite moon that is so accessible?)
Thats all for now…reason for Q’s is this is the first morning I have read the Bad Astronomer’s website so thoroughly. I know he’s a doper and I like what he has to say…(Plus I have a lot of time today…I’m snowed in )
Depends on what you mean by a Moon landing. They crash-landed a lunar probe in a polar crater to look for the signature of water vapor thrown up by the impact in July 2000, but no waer was found at that time.
The biggest reason for not sending another manned mission after the last one in 1972 is cost. We’d learned about as much as we could sending men to the Moon; any further missions would not have been particularly instructive.
I don’t know if there are any official plans for a permanent Lunar colony, but I’d wager it will happen some time in the next 50 - 100 years.
I guess it just amazes me that in 30 years we have not explored more of the moon. I am thinking we found something that would completely negate us wanting to return… I suppose I can not at this time make conjecture as to what it may have been…Possibly too harsh conditions? Not enough gravity? I dunno.
How to extract He[sup]3[/sup] from regolith, build structures in vacuum, extract ores with solar heating, that sort of thing. Much easier to do on the moon than in orbit, or all the way out to Mars.
Sure, but you have to balance things like risk, cost, and reward. It’s very risky and very expensive to send people into space, and there comes a point where the reward, in terms of technological advancement, scientific knowledge, etc.; is no longer worthe the risk and expense. Unmanned missions are dirt cheap compared to manned ones, so we can send more of them and potentially obtain more information than we could from a single manned mission. I’m not saying it’s never practical to send men into space, but it has to be worth the effort and cost.
Although I agree with Q.E.D. about the cost/benefit ratio of using unmanned craft for scientific missions (I try always to agree with Q.E.D.), there are other reasons for sending people into space.
I would much rather see a colony on the Moon than a manned mission to Mars. The main reason people seem to want to go to Mars is a “been there, done that” attitude toward the Moon, which, considering the vastly greater complication of going to Mars, strikes me as ludicrously shallow.
A colony on the moon would give us valuable experience in living in space that might make eventually going to Mars much more feasible (although it seems to me that limitations of the human body–radiation, muscle atrophy, bone mass loss–may make such long trips impossible with out much more sophisticated space craft).
The six months required to send people to Mars (and two-year total trip) would essentially make them totally vulnerable to any technical problem that arose on the way, while there, or on the way back.
The Moon, on the other hand, is only a couple of days away. Rescue missions would have at least a chance of success.
Yes, I’d love to see some serious rover missions on the moon. Check out a few of the billions of nooks and crannies we missed with Apollo. Who knows, there may be dilithium deposits hidden in those craters at the south pole Just from the standpoint of geology, there’s a lot we don’t know that unmanned missions could tell us.
I’ll agree with this. But the original context of my statement was the reasons for discontinuing manned missions back in the 70s. At that time, none of that was practical, necessary or safe enough. Now, we could do it quite easily and fairly safely, though it would still be expensive. I suspect it may even begin to become necessary as real estate Earthside becomes increasingly scarce.
People often fail to appreciate just how far it it is to the moon. It’s a lot further than the average space shuttle trip. And with that distance comes far greater costs and risks.
Colonies on the moon will happen, given time. The exploration and colonisation of the Moon is following much the same pattern as all other exploration on the Earth. The first discovery and exploration of a land doesn’t immediately herald a flood of occupancy.
The reason we went to the Moon in the first place was Cold War politics.
It was a serious national security concern that the Commies would dominate space for their vile communist purposes. Such a thing could not be permitted. When the communist threat in space evaporated, there was no more reason to go to the Moon.
Immediately, no, but subsequently, yes it does. This is why I posted this Q in the first place. There was only 6 immediate explorations of our moon. Why then were there not more?
Answer me that and I’ll bite. Otherwise all else is speculation. Does not history tell us that the land not explored will one day be habitated? I think it does.
Again: Why have we not had semi-permanent installations on the moon? Experimentation so close, is rare…why are we not experimenting on our own moon?
I am a layman, I do not know what experiments could or should be conducted on our moon. The only thing I do know is that we landed on a satelite planet very close to our own, a mere six times…and have not been back in more than 30 years…I’d like to here speculation as to why this is so? QED seems to think probes will solve our questions on the moon. I on the other hand, would like to know why we do not have an installation on the moon monitoring colonizational progress on a rock other than the earth…we have had 30 years folks, it’s time for something drastic…I just wish they’d publicize it.
There are certainly plans, not only by China, but the EU as well according to this article, which quotes an ESA scientist saying that a moon colony is possible within as little as 20 years.
The reason we’re not already there is basically what Q.E.D. has been saying, after 1972 the money dried up as the government didn’t want to spend the money anymore. With less money, plus the fact that the USSR’s own Moon program was cancelled meant there wasn’t any competition, NASA went after things that had more money-making potential.
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So we build an unfrigginlybelievably expensive Moon colony, so, uh, so we can someday build an even more unfrigginlybelievably expensive Mars colony? So we can maybe, uh, uh, help me out here.
how about the next time we we leave a huge blue sun resistant tarp on the moon. about a mile or so across jst to make darn sure everyone knows we went.
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Just from the standpoint of geology, there’s a lot we don’t know that unmanned missions could tell us.