# NASA wants a permanent Moonbase -- good idea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2006, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218 "2006-12-07T14:47:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/181 "2006-12-29T19:13:19Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] And if, in fifty years, when the USA is all grown up and ready for space colonization, and China says “Try for the Moon or Mars and our bases there will blow you out of the sky”, what then? [/quote] You don’t need a base on the Moon to blow something up in space or on the surface of the Moon. It hardly matters who gets there first. > [@](#): > > That’s really the straw that broke the camel’s back? That’s the main boondoggle that keeps America from universal prosperity? When we’ll spend [ten times that amount](http://money.cnn.com/2006/12/19/news/economy/iraq_costs.reut/index.htm?section=money_news_economy) in Iraq this year? Because cost(X) \< cost(Y), cost(X) is too trivial to be considered as part of any cost-benefit tradeoffs. That’s kid talk, not grownup talk. > [@](#): > > There are a hell of a lot bigger line items I’d like examined with the same scrutiny NASA receives routinely Me too. > [@](#): > > before I go cutting off our future. Even if we aggressively attempt to colonize the planets, ‘the future’ for the vast majority of our descendants in the next, say, 300 years, will be right here on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/182 "2006-12-29T19:23:12Z")
Are we ever going to leave the Earth? People talk about eventually colonizing other planets so we should probably learn how to do it in as safe a situation as possible. I think we have learned about as much as we can from living in space stations so next would be the Moon - it’s close, relatively geologically (oops lunologically) inactive, and can still close enough for rescue is something goes wrong. Next would be some of the outer moons (Europa and Titan spring to mind). Then once we have the knowhow to survive for extended periods of time in a biosphere, we can work on technology for getting to other star systems. As for technological advances, who knows? Look at the advances made due to the space race that would never have been practical in 1960 like miniaturization (no more vaccuum tubes) and materials engineering needed for the high temperatures and strict precision needed for that level of rocketry. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/183 "2006-12-29T19:34:19Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] There are also ways to learn to live on another planet without being on one. A Biosphere-type experiment on Antarctica (sealed environment with continuous heat loss across the barrier) would be a very good preliminary step, and probably doable for under a billion. Try that and get back to me when you’ve got it working. [/QUOTE] Building and maintaining a biosphere on on Antarctica wouldn’t teach us much more than how to build and maintain a biosphere on Antarctica. Big deal. I don’t want to live there. Where’s my sunlight and solar energy come from? You want to burn lots of fossil fuel or maybe build a nuclear power plant down there? What natural resources are these polar colonists going to use? Snow? We get lots of free energy on the moon, we don’t have to deal with blizzards and we can strip mine and pollute the place all we want and no one will worry about the penguins. Seriously, I think we’ve crowded the earth enough. I don’t want people colonizing the poles anymore than I want people colonizing the oceans. What I want is to learn how to live in space and how to exploit space resources because space is where all the stuff is at. Eventually we’re going to run out of earth to strip mine and we need to start learning out to get energy and material from space. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/184 "2006-12-29T19:37:18Z")
When talking about building things on the moon, why do you assume it has to be a huge factory? Think igloos. It may turn out that an excellent construction method is to take water, mix it with regolith, freeze it in a form, and make ‘bricks’ which you can then use to make habitats. Or perhaps we could ship up a lightweight solar concentrator or nuclear reactor that melts regolith into glass and extrudes formed pieces that can then be used to build structures. Or we find some hollow lava tubes, and create a spray-on sealant from lunar materials that could be used to coat the walls, sealing the tube for pressurization. Then we use solar power to split hydrogen and oxygen from water - the oxygen is used to pressurize the lava tube, the hydrogen is allowed to cool to a liquid in the shade to be used as rocket fuel. Just being able to manufacture rocket fuel for return trips would cut the cost of moon missions dramatically. ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/185 "2006-12-29T19:48:52Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] You don’t need a base on the Moon to blow something up in space or on the surface of the Moon. It hardly matters who gets there first. [/QUOTE] Fine, so China threatens to blow us up over Earth’s skies insted of some other skies. NASA, and by extension, the US, has a history of magnanimity in acting toward space in such a way that leaves it open to all. Until China makes it clear they possess the same attitude, it sure as hell does matter who gets there first. Assuming that space will always be as open to us as it is now is naive, to put it mildly. Especially since the next fifty years will show the world’s reaction to an America that has proven it is willing to go on more or less random murderous rampages from time to time. [QUOTE=RTFirefly] Because cost(X) \< cost(Y), cost(X) is too trivial to be considered as part of any cost-benefit tradeoffs. [/QUOTE] Not at all. It’s cost(x) represents a significantly smaller percentage of expenditures than cost(y), so the cost/benefit ratio fo y must be determined first before we decide if x is an inexcusable extavagance or not. NASA is 3 cents out of every 5 bucks the US spends this year. Sure, do a cost/benefit on it, but if NASA is really keeping America from accomplishing its other goals, doesn’t it say more about how the other $4.97 was spent than it does about whether NASA’s goals are a worthwhile pursuit for the money? NASA is a buck a week, with two bucks at Christmas and your birthday. Sure, if you spent it on lottery tickets and lost it all, it would be waste of money chasing a fantasy. But if you planned on spending (…checks budget math…) $177.05 a week, and feel poor with nothing to show for it next Jan 1, it wasn’t primarily your lottery habit that broke the bank, no matter how far-fetched your dreams were in buying the tickets. And I daresay NASA’s odds on paying off in the long run beat the lottery by several orders of magnitude. [QUOTE=RTFirefly] Even if we aggressively attempt to colonize the planets, ‘the future’ for the vast majority of our descendants in the next, say, 300 years, will be right here on Earth. [/QUOTE] Yeah, because the last 300 years of exploration and colonization have left all the power and promise in Europe, seeing as how so few people have seen fit to risk the journey to emigrate from there to the new lands, and scientific advancement since 1700 is hardly noteworthy in its ability to help us overcome physical challenges presented to humanity. The sheer inanity of your statement speaks for itself. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/186 "2006-12-29T20:09:21Z")
[QUOTE=SaintCad] As for technological advances, who knows? Look at the advances made due to the space race that would never have been practical in 1960 like miniaturization (no more vaccuum tubes) [/QUOTE] I don’t know if they’ve changed this recently, but IIRC, up until at least the mid-1990s, the space shuttle was running on 1970s-style computer technology. The space program has by and large lagged, not driven, the miniaturization of electronics. > [@levdrakon](#): > > Building and maintaining a biosphere on on Antarctica wouldn’t teach us much more than how to build and maintain a biosphere on Antarctica. Big deal. Big deal?! We don’t know how to build a biosphere _anywhere_ yet. Shouldn’t we try it in an inhospitably cold region of Earth before trying it in space? > [@](#): > > I don’t want to live there. You won’t get to live on the moon base either. So? This is _science_, not a retirement community. > [@](#): > > Where’s my sunlight and solar energy come from? You don’t think there’s a lot of sunlight and solar energy on Earth? Plus heat loss is less of a problem on Earth: it’s at least 150° C. above absolute zero outside. > [@](#): > > You want to burn lots of fossil fuel or maybe build a nuclear power plant down there? What natural resources are these polar colonists going to use? Snow? > > We get lots of free energy on the moon, we don’t have to deal with blizzards and we can strip mine and pollute the place all we want and no one will worry about the penguins. > > Seriously, I think we’ve crowded the earth enough. I don’t want people colonizing the poles anymore than I want people colonizing the oceans. OK, let’s move it to Siberia if you’re worried about Antarctica. I’m easy. The first moon base residents won’t have a power plant, other than solar, and won’t be using natural resources. We don’t know what resources they’ll be able to use on the Moon, either. But let’s test out the theories about how much stuff, and how many people, it takes to set up an almost-self-sustaining moon base _in a hostile environment on Earth_. We can even have them mine and smelt ore in a biosphere bubble in Siberia. > [@](#): > > What I want is to learn how to live in space and how to exploit space resources because space is where all the stuff is at. Eventually we’re going to run out of earth to strip mine and we need to start learning out to get energy and material from space. Yeah, but there’s a lot we can do down here to master the art of living in space. And it’s all a lot cheaper to do down here. Let’s do that first. It’ll give us an idea of how _possible_ it all is. It’s called _prototyping_. Once you’ve written the specs for the moon base, there’s no going back. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But the NASA people, the taxpayers - whoever the ‘customer’ is seen as - may have vague ideas about what it means for the base to ‘work’. Not to mention, many of their ideas may not actually be feasible. So we prototype down here, where we can make a lot of mistakes cheaply - at least, cheaper by a few orders of magnitude than making them on the Moon. Once the prototype ‘works’ in the sense of people can live in it for months in between getting resources from outside the sealed bubble, they can add onto the bubble, or have a separate bubble, to do mining and smelting in. They can measure just how much stuff must be shipped to the bubble to start the mining and smelting operations, and to build any factories they want to try out. And then it’s not airy-fairy. You can talk about payloads and costs and sustainability in a very concrete sense, because you will have already done it in a way. But if you’re unwilling to do a prototype, then why should you expect anyone to buy into the real thing? ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/187 "2006-12-29T20:19:17Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] When talking about building things on the moon, why do you assume it has to be a huge factory? Think igloos. It may turn out that an excellent construction method is to take water, mix it with regolith, freeze it in a form, and make ‘bricks’ which you can then use to make habitats. Or perhaps we could ship up a lightweight solar concentrator or nuclear reactor that melts regolith into glass and extrudes formed pieces that can then be used to build structures. Or we find some hollow lava tubes, and create a spray-on sealant from lunar materials that could be used to coat the walls, sealing the tube for pressurization. Then we use solar power to split hydrogen and oxygen from water - the oxygen is used to pressurize the lava tube, the hydrogen is allowed to cool to a liquid in the shade to be used as rocket fuel. Just being able to manufacture rocket fuel for return trips would cut the cost of moon missions dramatically. [/QUOTE] I’m thinking, why can’t this all be tested down here? Send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon, have a robot scoop up some regolith, shoot it back, see how much water it takes to make bricks. Have another robot set off an explosion against solid rock and pick up some pieces, see what minerals we’ve really got to make this sealant from. If you’ve read David Brin’s _The Uplift War_, think of me as the Suzerain of Cost and Caution. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/188 "2006-12-29T20:22:22Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Yeah, but there’s a lot we can do down here to master the art of living in space. And it’s all a lot cheaper to do down here. Let’s do that first. It’ll give us an idea of how _possible_ it all is. [/QUOTE] Of course, another way is to let the Chinese set up their Moonbase **first,** and learn from their mistakes. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/189 "2006-12-29T20:36:26Z")
[QUOTE=scotandrsn] Fine, so China threatens to blow us up over Earth’s skies insted of some other skies. NASA, and by extension, the US, has a history of magnanimity in acting toward space in such a way that leaves it open to all. Until China makes it clear they possess the same attitude, it sure as hell does matter who gets there first. [/quote] I’m still trying to figure out how. If that’s their attitude, we can just blow up their moon base from Earth. Neither side’s gained an edge in keeping the other from being there by getting there first. > [@](#): > > Assuming that space will always be as open to us as it is now is naive, to put it mildly. Especially since the next fifty years will show the world’s reaction to an America that has proven it is willing to go on more or less random murderous rampages from time to time. Maybe that demonstrates that we shouldn’t be the nation that colonizes space. > [@](#): > > Not at all. It’s cost(x) represents a significantly smaller percentage of expenditures than cost(y), so the cost/benefit ratio fo y must be determined first before we decide if x is an inexcusable extavagance or not. NASA is 3 cents out of every 5 bucks the US spends this year. Sure, do a cost/benefit on it, but if NASA is really keeping America from accomplishing its other goals, doesn’t it say more about how the other $4.97 was spent than it does about whether NASA’s goals are a worthwhile pursuit for the money? OK, first about 2/3 of the budget is nondiscretionary. Social Security, Medicare, stuff like that. So there goes $3.33. Then there’s defense. Hopefully we can get that down to 50¢ again before too long, but IIRC it’s a bit more now. So what we’ve really got is $1.20 to play with. 3¢ out of a buck-twenty is nontrivial already, and you’re proposing to perhaps triple it. So that’s 7.5% of the nondefense discretionary budget. _Very_ nontrivial. Blowing wads like that can indeed stop you from doing _many_ worthwhile projects. > [@](#): > > And I daresay NASA’s odds on paying off in the long run beat the lottery by several orders of magnitude. And I would bet the house that waiting 50 years and starting our manned space exploration program then, would cost us approximately nothing in terms of “long run” (i.e. 300+ years) payoff. > [@](#): > > Yeah, because the last 300 years of exploration and colonization have left all the power and promise in Europe, seeing as how so few people have seen fit to risk the journey to emigrate from there to the new lands, and scientific advancement since 1700 is hardly noteworthy in its ability to help us overcome physical challenges presented to humanity. The sheer inanity of your statement speaks for itself. Guess what: when Columbus sailed from Europe, he knew he’d be able to drink the water and breathe the air, once he got to where he was going. He knew there would be game to kill and eat. The physical challenges of the European settling of the Americas was a matter of getting people over here, and getting a regular crop cycle going. What would work in Europe would mostly work here. That will NOT be true on the Moon, or Mars, or elsewhere. ‘The sheer inanity of your analogy speaks for itself.’ ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/190 "2006-12-29T20:42:47Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Of course, another way is to let the Chinese set up their Moonbase **first,** and learn from their mistakes. 😉 [/QUOTE] Works for me. And why should we do it at all, if they do it first? After all, what most posters here seem to be concerned with is mankind’s destiny in the stars, or some such. Chinese people are people. If they go to the stars and we blow ourselves up, then mankind continues just as truly as if Europeans go to the stars. ---
**Author:** ![levdrakon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/49beb7/32.png) [@levdrakon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/levdrakon)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/191 "2006-12-29T22:26:54Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Big deal?! We don’t know how to build a biosphere _anywhere_ yet. Shouldn’t we try it in an inhospitably cold region of Earth before trying it in space? [/quote] We did build Biosphere & Biosphere II projects. There was also the [BIOS-3](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3) Soviet project. As long as we’re allowed to resupply these environments once every month or two, or as needed, I think they all proved you can in fact build a biosphere. They can function just fine for _at least_ a few months without outside input. The main problems with Biosphere were carbon dioxide levels being too high and low oxygen levels. This was caused by low light due to bad weather, which is not a space problem, improperly cured concrete, and an imbalance of carbon and microbes in the soil. > [@](#): > > You won’t get to live on the moon base either. So? What?!? Dammit! > [@](#): > > You don’t think there’s a lot of sunlight and solar energy on Earth? Plus heat loss is less of a problem on Earth: it’s at least 150° C. above absolute zero outside. Actually I thought in space heat buildup was a bigger problem. With no atmosphere, heat doesn’t radiate away as quickly. That would be difficult to simulate on earth, wouldn’t it? > [@](#): > > The first moon base residents won’t have a power plant, other than solar, and won’t be using natural resources. We don’t know what resources they’ll be able to use on the Moon, either. But let’s test out the theories about how much stuff, and how many people, it takes to set up an almost-self-sustaining moon base _in a hostile environment on Earth_. We can even have them mine and smelt ore in a biosphere bubble in Siberia. > > Yeah, but there’s a lot we can do down here to master the art of living in space. And it’s all a lot cheaper to do down here. Let’s do that first. It’ll give us an idea of how _possible_ it all is. > > It’s called _prototyping_. Once you’ve written the specs for the moon base, there’s no going back. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But the NASA people, the taxpayers - whoever the ‘customer’ is seen as - may have vague ideas about what it means for the base to ‘work’. Not to mention, many of their ideas may not actually be feasible. > > So we prototype down here, where we can make a lot of mistakes cheaply - at least, cheaper by a few orders of magnitude than making them on the Moon. Once the prototype ‘works’ in the sense of people can live in it for months in between getting resources from outside the sealed bubble, they can add onto the bubble, or have a separate bubble, to do mining and smelting in. They can measure just how much stuff must be shipped to the bubble to start the mining and smelting operations, and to build any factories they want to try out. > > And then it’s not airy-fairy. You can talk about payloads and costs and sustainability in a very concrete sense, because you will have already done it in a way. > > But if you’re unwilling to do a prototype, then why should you expect anyone to buy into the real thing? I don’t know what NASA’s exact plans are for a moon base, but I’d imagine a lot of what you’re talking about probably will be simulated and prototyped before actually being tried on the moon. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/192 "2006-12-29T22:48:23Z")
[QUOTE=Sam Stone] When talking about building things on the moon, why do you assume it has to be a huge factory? Think igloos. It may turn out that an excellent construction method is to take water, mix it with regolith, freeze it in a form, and make ‘bricks’ which you can then use to make habitats. [/QUOTE] Ermmm . . . the “brick” keeps its integrity when the ice melts, right? 'Cause it’s gonna melt. It gets mighty hot during the two-week lunar “day.” ---
**Author:** ![scotandrsn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@scotandrsn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scotandrsn)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2006, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/193 "2006-12-29T23:29:18Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] I’m still trying to figure out how. If that’s their attitude, we can just blow up their moon base from Earth. Neither side’s gained an edge in keeping the other from being there by getting there first. Maybe that demonstrates that we shouldn’t be the nation that colonizes space. [/QUOTE] We have never excluded anyone else from space. We have no guarantees that our competitors feel the same way. We go first, it’s almost assured that everyone gets a piece of the pie. Someone else goes first, and by your own example, we may have to start WWIII to keep our options open. It baffles me that these two scenarios could be equivalent in anyone’s eyes. [QUOTE=RTFirefly] OK, first about 2/3 of the budget is nondiscretionary. Social Security, Medicare, stuff like that. So there goes $3.33. Then there’s defense. Hopefully we can get that down to 50¢ again before too long, but IIRC it’s a bit more now. So what we’ve really got is $1.20 to play with. 3¢ out of a buck-twenty is nontrivial already, and you’re proposing to perhaps triple it. So that’s 7.5% of the nondefense discretionary budget. _Very_ nontrivial. Blowing wads like that can indeed stop you from doing _many_ worthwhile projects. [/QUOTE] I never said it ought to be tripled. I merely provided the math showed tripling it would still not amount to a great deal of the total federal budget. NASA does amazing amounts of stuff with the budget they have, and I can’t imagine that their budget would even need to be doubled, much less tripled. I used tripled because you said the NASA budget would skyrocket. I’m still waiting for any historical precedent which suggests that’s even remotely likely to happen. [QUOTE=RTFirefly] And I would bet the house that waiting 50 years and starting our manned space exploration program then, would cost us approximately nothing in terms of “long run” (i.e. 300+ years) payoff. [/QUOTE] Save, of course, for the necessary military buildup for going toe-to-toe with China as in your above scenario. [QUOTE=RTFirefly] Guess what: when Columbus sailed from Europe, he knew he’d be able to drink the water and breathe the air, once he got to where he was going. He knew there would be game to kill and eat. [/QUOTE] Inane analogy yourself. Columbus was doing what most people thought was physically impossible and logistically insurmountable and had to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to wheedle the necessary resources out of the unimaginative. The fact that, in hindsight, he couldn’t have been more wrong about what he was getting himself into, I’m sure makes you think the expenditure was not worth it, 500 years later, huh? [QUOTE=RTFirefly] The physical challenges of the European settling of the Americas was a matter of getting people over here, and getting a regular crop cycle going. What would work in Europe would mostly work here. That will NOT be true on the Moon, or Mars, or elsewhere. [/QUOTE] Earth and lunar mineral composition are nearly identical, and there’s every indication that a decent amount of moisture is available. If we can provide a controlled atmosphere, which there is every indication we can figure out how to do, what works here will work there. As for Mars, they have a 24-hour day, more gravity than the moon, and as we just recently found out, occasional running liquid water. If we can figure out the moon, a much harsher environment, Mars, but for the long-distance logistics, will be a piece of cake. Antarctic bases will help figure some of this out, but not everything. Not large-scale heat dissipation in a vacuum, not long-term exposure to reduced gravity. Some of the research has to be done off-planet. But don’t worry. Remember, the money spent is not printed out and stuffed into the rockets as kindling. It’s all paid to flesh and blood people here on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/194 "2006-12-30T00:02:13Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Yeah, but there’s a lot we can do down here to master the art of living in space. And it’s all a lot cheaper to do down here. Let’s do that first. It’ll give us an idea of how _possible_ it all is. It’s called _prototyping_. Once you’ve written the specs for the moon base, there’s no going back. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. But the NASA people, the taxpayers - whoever the ‘customer’ is seen as - may have vague ideas about what it means for the base to ‘work’. Not to mention, many of their ideas may not actually be feasible. So we prototype down here, where we can make a lot of mistakes cheaply - at least, cheaper by a few orders of magnitude than making them on the Moon. Once the prototype ‘works’ in the sense of people can live in it for months in between getting resources from outside the sealed bubble, they can add onto the bubble, or have a separate bubble, to do mining and smelting in. They can measure just how much stuff must be shipped to the bubble to start the mining and smelting operations, and to build any factories they want to try out. [/QUOTE] Why prototype if you don’t eventually plan on getting to the moon. Is your real question the timeline and if 2024 is realistic? Let’s see: 1. Physically get there. We did it in 1969 and if we had used Soviet LEM’s and American rockets we would have been there sooner. 2. Gettting the equipment to the moon. With the new ceramics, carbon-poly-fibroid whatevers, etc, we can cut down the weight considerably and best of all, these can be unmanned. Send up the equipment and then a crew to piece a habitat together for a slightly bigger crew. Lather, rinse, repeat until you build it up to a moon base population. The big question is: can we save money by having reusable supply ships (next generation of shuttle?) 3. Don’t die. Well, the space stations seem to do pretty well although I’d want some Russians with me with their expertise on keeping MIR together. The problem is long term - do we really want to send supply ships on a continual basis. 4. Self-sustaining environment. This is the key. A moon base could probably get by with continual resupply but Mars, Europa, Titan, Tau Ceti, etc. cannot be resupplied as easily. Can this be prototyped on Earth? Of course and I don’t think ANYONE is implying that we shouldn’t but realistically, how long will it take to develop a self-sustaining biosphere? Also, the moon has certain advantages that the Earth doesn’t in terms of energy. Huge amounts of solar radiation. Huge temperature differential between that light and dark side (thermocoupling anyone?). A near perfect vaccuum (should be great for distilling **something** ). ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/195 "2006-12-30T07:22:42Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] Your raw materials are going to be raw indeed. Going to make stuff out of iron? (Steel is right out - need coke, which is a coal product. Coal’s a fossil fuel.) [/quote] Bzzt! Coke is merely a handy form of carbon, and certain specialized steel alloys _can’t_ be made with coke due to the impuritites in the coke, you use pure carbon. The Japanese managed to make some of the finest steel swords using straw as the source of carbon. A lunar colony will presumably have hydroponic gardens and some of the plant matter can be used to make steel. Not to mention that many of the components of the spacecraft, etc. will be made from carbon fiber materials, this can be dumped into the furnace to supply carbon. > [@](#): > > You’re going to need to mine it, which will require mining machinery that you’ll need to import from Earth because you don’t have raw materials to work with your lathe yet. The mining equipment doesn’t have to be all that sophisticated, and will have to be imported anyway, since any lunar base will have to have underground components to protect the inhabitants from micrometeorite impacts and radiation. > [@](#): > > You’re going to need to purify it, which to do in quantity will require something a bit more advanced than you can do in your garage. So you’ll need to bring up the pieces of a smelter, I believe it is, from Earth. Bzzt! Wrong, again. [As far back as **1954** the French were using the sun’s rays to heat steel to the melting point.](http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2006/07/19/sun-furnace-goes-to-work/) Now, given that NASA likes to wrap their lunar landers in shiney material like mylar, and that with no atmosphere the Moon gets more sunlight than the Earth, you _don’t_ need nearly as large a solar array on the Moon as you would on Earth, so, if you’re willing to do some cannabilization, you’ll have almost everything you need with you. The crucible can be made from materials already on the Moon (we can make concrete from lunar soil fairly easily from what I understand). > [@](#): > > Then unless you’re one hell of a lathe operator, you’ll probably need a bunch of people working a bunch of lathes…you get the idea. Bzzt! Wrong yet _again_. You simply have _no_ idea of how fast CNC machines with modern ceramic cutters are (the cutters are about the size of a fingernail and about 1/8th of an inch thick, they weigh almost nothing). A CNC machine can make more parts in an _hour_ than the best machinist can do in a day (or more). You don’t even need to be there to watch the thing work. Once you load the program and turn the thing on, it’ll keep running until it runs out of raw materials or a tool breaks. In either case, the machine will _know_ what’s going on, and can send you a message detailing what the problem is, while you’re out on the surface of the Moon practicing your Alan Shepard impersonation (i.e. playing golf). > [@](#): > > To make sophisticated products requires complexity and interdependence, which requires lots of people and machinery. Bzzt! No, _again._ In Japan, there are a number of automated factories which have only a very small maintience crew. Specialized machinery is only necessarily if you’re building a dedicated factory that will build only _one_ item. A standard machine shop can, in a pinch, produce nearly everything it needs provided it has enough raw stock. > [@](#): > > Another reason for building the colony on Earth first is to see what minimum combination of people and imports you really need for a mostly, but not completely, self-sustaining base, and what level of technology that base would have. NASA and Russia have done a number of simulations already to determine exactly this. Really, the only thing left to do is build the thing on the Moon. > [@](#): > > But the point is, let’s find all this out by spending hundreds of **millions** of dollars here on Earth, and _then_ we can decide what the implications are for the attributes and costs of a lunar base. I’m willing to see my tax dollars spent on an assortment of Earthbound tests of sustainability in that sort of price range. But to decide that it’s worth spending that sort of money on a lunar base, and _then_ doing sustainability testing of this sort, is bassackwards. It’s been done, and the tab wasn’t hundreds of millions of dollars. NASA done experiments, the Russians have done experiments, and the Mars Society has done experiments. Oh, and I thought of another commercial product which the Moon can produce that will be in great demand: Abrasives. Lunar soil is the _most_ abrasive stuff known to man. Lots of manufacturing industries need better abrasives and the Moon is literally covered in the stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2006, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218/196 "2006-12-30T10:12:38Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Ermmm . . . the “brick” keeps its integrity when the ice melts, right? 'Cause it’s gonna melt. It gets mighty hot during the two-week lunar “day.” [/QUOTE] Not if you put a tarp over your building. Then it freezes and stays frozen. But I don’t know what we’ll actually build and how. Vacuum opens up lots of opportunities for unique projects. For instance, cooling hydrogen down to a liquid is just a matter of putting your container in the shade and letting it radiate its heat away. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nasa-wants-a-permanent-moonbase-good-idea/383218.md?page=9)