To get back to reasons for going to the moon again, one excellent advantage of a moon base would be to build an observatory. Like the Hubble telescope, it would have the advantage of no atmosphere to look through, but unlike Hubble, it could be really really really big, like the giant earth-based optical telescopes.
Yes; the time has not really been right for Moon clonisation, and it still isn’t yet- if the '70’s and '80’s moonbases had been built they would have been logistical nightmares.
What we need to do now is to sent a few thousand remote controlled robots to the Moon; the technology of robot operation is nowadays much better than 30 years ago, and improving all the time.
the light-speed delay is minimal compared to that associated with Mars, so we won’t need AI.
Yet.
The mining robots can be operated by experts in shifts on Earth; a few robots could be dedicated to net connected tourism; explore the Moon’s surface at will for a small fee…
The robots can assemble prospecting and mining equipment; they are looking for He3, aluminium, iron, oxygen; and particularly silicon to build photovoltaic arrays; if they find any water I will be pleasantly surprised, but basically the establishment of a power collection system is a priority.
Once there is enough power to run refining equipment the human habitats can be built; say around 2020. Hydrogen and carbon are in short supply, but I tentatively suggest that some Earth-approaching objects might have these elements in abundance-
a number of methods have been put forward to get these volatiles from the objects to the surface of the Moon, mostly involving mass-drivers.
Once a few colonies are up there, growing food in tanks or perhaps polytunnels, we can build a mass driver to put
Yes; the time has not really been right for Moon clonisation, and it still isn’t yet- if the '70’s and '80’s moonbases had been built they would have been logistical nightmares.
What we need to do now is to sent a few thousand remote controlled robots to the Moon; the technology of robot operation is nowadays much better than 30 years ago, and improving all the time.
the light-speed delay is minimal compared to that associated with Mars, so we won’t need AI.
Yet.
The mining robots can be operated by experts in shifts on Earth; a few robots could be dedicated to net connected tourism; explore the Moon’s surface at will for a small fee…
The robots can assemble prospecting and mining equipment; they are looking for He3, aluminium, iron, oxygen; and particularly silicon to build photovoltaic arrays; if they find any water I will be pleasantly surprised, but basically the establishment of a power collection system is a priority.
Once there is enough power to run refining equipment the human habitats can be built; say around 2020. Hydrogen and carbon are in short supply, but I tentatively suggest that some Earth-approaching objects might have these elements in abundance-
a number of methods have been put forward to get these volatiles from the objects to the surface of the Moon, mostly involving mass-drivers.
Once a few colonies are up there, growing food in tanks or perhaps polytunnels, we can build a mass driver to put Moon mined materials into orbit, to construct spacecraft and fuel them with aluminium/oxygen, ion drive and Vasimr propulsion, fissionable elements if available, perhaps eventually He3 fusion; the Moon will be the key to the Solar System, and will become a big customer for volatiles dragged back from icy outer system bodies.
The Solar system is an inhospitable place, but the elements for life and growth are all there, just not always in the right places; gradually it will be possible to build up a circulation of volatiles and metals to create a spaceborne ecosphere which could last for hundreds of millions of years at least.
SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
Sorry about double post…
steve
There is no colony on the moon for the same reason there is no Starbuck’s in Antartica - there’s no return on investment. No corporation or group of corporations could take on a long-term project like that, shareholders can’t see beyond next quarter’s returns. That would leave it up to governments, but taxpayers are unwilling to either pay more tax or have more services cut to fund the project. The only reason it worked in the 60’s and 70’s was the whole cold war/national pride thing mentioned earlier.
RE: A colony on the moon…
Geez, we couldn’t even get the biosphere right…
Imagine the vast complications of the moon’s environment…
All things considered, I’m guessing we’re a century away from the proper technology at best…
Launch capacity is a strong limitation. The Saturn V (and the failed Soviet N-1) were built especially for manned lunar landings. Once they were cancelled, the largest available launchers were the Titan III and Proton boosters, used for military payloads. We could send unmanned lunar rovers with the Shuttle or Proton, but to send people back to the moon would mean developing huge rockets with little other purpose except lunar missions. At multi-billion dollar cost just to create the standing capacity, manned missions are going to be a hard sell. Right now our best bet would be a Shuttle/Energia derived vehicle, but even that’s not a sure thing.
The goal of Biosphere was to create a self-sustaining system that required no input from the outside. Any moon base would probably receive regular shipments of food, water and air from Earth, and also rotate personell regularly, like space stations do.
The launch costs to maintain a moon base this way would be steep, but there is no technological barrier to us having a moon base today if we are willing to make the economic investment in launch systems and supply runs.
I hear this said a lot, and everyone treats it as an obvious truism, but it’s not.
Businesses routinely take on long-term projects. Boeing bet the entire company on the 747, which would take more than a decade to bring to market. GM and other auto companies have heavily invested in electric and hydrogen fuel cell technologies, and no one expeccts those to be profitable for a decade or more (and they’ve been working on it for 20 years already). Defense contractors are used to development cycles measured in decades. Oil exploration companies build oil platforms and ships that will not pay off their investment for decades from the time they are envisioned. The Hilton hotel company has spent money on feasibility studies for orbital hotels. And the list goes on.
Just in the small division of a big conglomerate that I work for, we routinely plan out projectss years into the future. We’re currently working on a new product design that won’t even be out of the basic R&D phase for a few years (and then years of development after that), and we’re spending a significant chunk of our resources on it.
On the contrary, it’s government that can’t look forward into the future. How many projects in government get funded that won’t show returns for several election cycles? Not many.
What IS true is that companies don’t spend money down blind alleys. If you could show Hilton that a billion dollar investment in a space hotel would return a profit of X in 20 years, which would make it a better investment than putting that money in the bank, they’d have no problem funding the venture. The reason GM and other auto makers are spending billions on long-term technology products is because they know that they will have to have alternatives, so it’s a good investment.
But a moonbase? How is that profitable? When? What’s the path to giving the shareholders a return on their investment? If you can solve that problem, businesses will invest for the long term.
I wonder how much money Florida tourism would make , if something like the Saturn Rockets were to start taking off from the cape again
Declan
And how well did Biosphere meet this goal? Well, according to Bob Park in What’s New:
“When eight ‘biospherians,’ dressed in Star-Trek uniforms, marched into their gleaming 3-acre terrarium in 1991 and closed the air lock, it was hailed as a bold experiment. They vowed to remain for two years, recycling water, air and waste and growing their own food. It didn’t take that long to get an answer. Within weeks, the crystal-clear ‘ocean’ turned to slime. Biospherians were soon gasping for air; then the crops failed. Texas oil billionaire Edward Bass, who had bankrolled Biosphere-2, turned to Columbia University to find a legitimate science use. But the original research question was already answered: Far larger and more elaborate than anything that could be transported to Mars, Biosphere-2 could not sustain eight humans. Columbia is pulling out, but Biosphere-2 could still be useful. Anyone who proposes a space colony could be sent there to live for two years.”
Yes, curt, but his point was that a moon base wouldn’t have to meet that goal. They’re unrelated.
The NASA Haughton-Mars project is arguably more relevant here than Biosphere.
The goal of the Biosphere was to work towards colonization of other places besides Earth - they’re very related. They can’t even do it, right here on Earth, for more than a few measley weeks, and that’s given a huge head start by stocking the place up to begin with. How often are these supply ships supposed to run anyway?
Currently, I believe it costs something like $15,000/Kg to bump something up to geosync. The beleive best case lower limit is something like $10,000/kg with current technology. Even scripming on everything but the bare essentials, were going to need probably 1/2 a ton per person worth of supplies, life support etc. Thats 50 million per person, per trip. Setting up a moon colony would require costs to come down a few orders of magnitude before it is feasible.
I dont remember where I saw this, but I remember reading something about research being done on the feasability of a “space elevator”, which would end up being a direct link to orbit. The problems that were mentioned in the article had more to do with the heat that friction would cause during the transit, and not the actual structural stability or mechanical possibility of something like this working.
Does anyone know what I’m talking about? I vaguely remember the article and I certainly dont have any personal knowledge of whether such a thing would work, but if it did, wouldnt voyages to the moon become much less expensive? You would need only 1 shuttle to travel between orbit and the moon, and it would never have to take off against earth’s gravity, right? Just use the elevator to haul up things like fuel and passengers and equipment; the small stuff.
Anyway, hopefully someone with more knowledge than me will come around and clear this up.
You’re probably correct that we don’t have the technology to build a self-sustaining colony in space. But a research outpost doesn’t have to be self-sustaining. It’s much easier to construct a research station dependent on a regular shipment of supplies. That’s all we have in Antarctica and they do a lot of valuable science there too. Some degree of self sustenance is desirable, like water recycling and oxygen production, but that shouldn’t be too difficult with the current technology.
I think the economics go a little something like this.
Step 1: Build Moon Base
Step 2:
Step 3: Profit!
Mosier, you’re correct that there is some talk of building a Space Elevator. We don’t yet have the technology for it, but we are making progress (the biggest hurdle is production of nanotube fiber on large scales… Nothing else is strong and light enough to make the cable). But when we eventually do make one, it’s going to be even better than you’re making it out to be. You could take the elevator up to geosynchronous orbit and then take a shuttle from there (I presume you mean a general back-and-forth vehicle, not the brick-with-wings we currently use to get people into space), but you don’t need a rocket vehicle at all. If you keep going up past the geosynchronous height on a space elevator before letting go, then you’ll “fall” away from the Earth. Time it right, and you could “fall” all the way to the Moon, there to be caught by another Space Elevator-type device which would deposit you gently on the surface. And you could use the elevator for big stuff and small stuff alike.
friedo mentioned the possibility of an observatory on the Moon, but I don’t see the argument on that one. You can build a telescope far, far larger in orbit then you ever possibly could on the surface of any world. The only reason that the Hubble was so small, compared to Earthly research telescopes, was that it was built on Earth, then launched whole into orbit. The Moon does have the advatage that the raw materials needed are there, but even so, it’d be better to harvest the materials from the Moon or elsewhere in space (near-Earth asteroids are probably the best source), send them to an orbital facility, and build your telescope in orbit.
And along the lines of Podkayne’s endorsement of international competition in the Space Race, there are rumors that Bush is soon to announce a new initiative in manned space flight, possibly a return of humans to the Moon or a manned trip to Mars. The rumor mill has not yet made it clear, however, if said initiative is going to receive any funding.
> Step 3: Profit!
Those darn gnomes…they get into everything.