This is an example of the cultural blindness we have fallen into by advantage of having been there first.
Who says there will be later chances? What if China doesn’t want to let us colonize “their” moon?
This is incorrect. To launch a rocket from the moon that was more economical than one launched from earth, more than 5/6th of the mass of that rocket needs to be made of moon mass. That means you need to have a machine that converts lunar regolith into every other chemical used in the production and manufacture of a space exploration system. Also, you need to have manufacturing (and testing) facilities on the moon. To launch a “routine” satellite from earth costs tens of millions of dollars and involves thousands of people. The manufacturing, assembly, integration, and test requires dozens of very very skilled experts working in million-dollar facilities. Last but not least, anything that you do send up to the moon to help speed up this bootstrapping process – including the rocket scientists – needs to have fuel to climb out of earth’s gravity well, and fuel to land on the Moon. There’s no atmosphere there, so you need to use up fuel to stop.
Going to Mars makes much more sense:
- If you bring hydrogen (the lightest element) with you to Mars, you can combine the Martian atmosphere with it in various combinations to get breathable air, water, oxygen, and methane.
- Landing on Mars requires a heat shield and a parachute; again, the Martian atmosphere helps you out.
- Mars’ atmosphere is high in CO[sub]2[/sub], so you might even be able to grow crops inside a greenhouse.
- There might be actual water on Mars.
“But hey,” you’re thinking, “why not go to Mars from the Moon?” See the reasons above – there’s no percentage in it. You might as well just go straight to Mars. Check out The Case For Mars if you’re still not convinced; Dr. Zubrin does a fantastic job of laying out an elegant but robust plan for putting people on Mars.
If we’re not going to Mars, I’d rather spend the money on putting observatories and satellites at the Lagrange points. A manned mission to the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange Point would be pretty cool, and it would be further than we’d ever gone before. We could place a modular observatory there, install sensors, and then send manned flights back once a year to replace the ones that wore out. You can get there and back from earth orbit with something like 20m/s delta-V, so it’s pretty cheap; it just takes something like a month to get there.
I think I would prefer to spend the money on things that might lead up to a moon base, the first being a cheap and efficient way of getting things in orbit.
As some have already answered, no it is not, but there are other parts of the solar systemthat are awash with “fossil” fuels, such as one of Jupiter’s moons, Titan.
Targo
We Earthlings only have rocket science and the limits of that avenue for advancing space exploration have been pretty much explored in full. The only logical conclusion from a cost benefit viewpoint is NO to moon base with humans running around maintaining it.
Even a Moon base staffed by three undersized midgets would be almost impossible for Earth technology to maintain, from a logistical aspect.
Two weeks to get there and two weeks to get back for a tiny amount of provisions, a small payload for the round trip.
The idea is absurd.
If it’s done on the moon at all it will not be done by humans but by remotely controlled robots powered by a combination of solar power and a low intensity nuclear power plant.
The most sensible course would be to launch a bigger and better Hubble telescope in near Earth orbit. Less cost, more benefit, easier access for repairs, and so on.
Targo
As opposed to what? Universities and research institutions can’t afford it, and the private-commercial sector does nothing that does not offer some prospect of short-term profit.
What?! We’re not talking about colonies just yet, we’re talking about a base. If it’s possible to build a permanently manned orbiting space station that works, why not a Moonbase? And working out any technical obstacles to that – if there are any – could get us that much closer to being able to build viable space colonies (i.e., habitats where people live their whole lives and raise their children and grandchildren).
Unfortunately, we don’t have any practical use for that yet. Do we? I’m all for controlled-fusion research, but let’s not lose track of where we’re starting from.
Anyway, it should be all right so long as they don’t use the base for a nuclear waste dump. That’s just asking for trouble. 
Where are you getting this assertion from? What does ‘almost impossible’ mean to you?? What is the huge logistics hurdle? Obviously NASA thinks it can setup and support a moon base for 6 month rotating crews…why do you contend they are wrong?
We are talking about the moon, right? Small payloads? Two week round trips? Where are you getting this stuff from? IIRC it takes about 3 days to get to the moon (and there wouldn’t BE a round trip for logistics resupply). As for ‘small payloads’…we can get a craft the size of a shuttle up there. If you were just sending up supplies (unmanned) then the bulk of the cargo would BE supplies. One shuttle sized payload consisting mainly of supplies is a lot of supplies. And the Russians can send up even more with THEIR resupply ships. Even if Russia isn’t on board, I’m fairly confident we can steal the design and build one of their unmanned resupply ships for ourselves.
-XT
BTW, does Canada have a space program?
(I know Mexico does but it’s such a shoestring operation . . .)
The past 20 years have done nothing to convince me that NASA has the chops to set up a moon base. They’ve done some great things with unmanned probes, but their post-Apollo record on manned travel isn’t great. Given their history of cost and schedule overruns with anything that carries humans, I’d expect a trillion to be a lowball figure if they’re already estimating a few hundred billion. Even if I believed we have a trillion to spend on a moon base (which I don’t), I’m not convinced NASA would succeed.
I believe threemae brings up colonies, like I do, in response to several arguments saying that a moon base is necessary to reach the ultimate goal of human colonization of other planets. See the references to Stephen Hawking’s proclamation that humanity must expand beyond Earth. I agree with this btw, but it’ll happen more on a scale of centuries or millenia from now.
To sum up my argument: Yes, a moon base would be an immensely cool and probably useful thing (in the very long run). Right now, it’s too damn expensive, and there are too many other immediately pressing concerns – like getting the national budget under some vague semblance of control. And spending however many hundreds of billions is not going to help that particular problem. Starting some massive and long term project of human exploration of space isn’t going to be useful, if there isn’t a functional government back on Earth capable of supporting such a program.
And from your link:
Also:
Got any cost figures for our South Pole base? I’m sure it costs [Dr. Evil]millions of dollars![/Dr. Evil]
I’m all for our government spending money to support pure science. I’m good for billions a year, and maybe even a long-term commitment to a total of tens of billions for a particular project, if I think that sort of knowledge is worth that much. But on the order of a trillion bucks, just to learn how to live in space? Sure - in that alternate future of 2001 where the surpluses were going to roll in, year after year, while we paid off the national debt and then we didn’t know what to do with all that extra money.
Naw…and I’m too lazy to look em up. You are right…today it would cost millions to run and support those bases. Of course, it probably cost millions or hundreds of millions to first build and support those bases a century or so ago (not sure exactly who was the first to put scientific facilities there and support them…the Brits? Not sure when either off the top of my head). And back then millions were real money.
The price of doing science and exploration continues to go up, relatively. I’m sure the expedition to explore the Greenland or the coast of what would become Canada by the vikings didn’t cost nearly what Columbus spent. But then, relatively speaking, the US’s total productivity income is how much more than those countries that put in those initial scientific facilities at the South Pole?
-XT
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Sam, but we live in interesting times. There are far more challenges coming at us right now than I’d wish on any generation. The only way stagnation is a threat is if we pretend the challenges aren’t there.
We could try having a more reasonable foreign policy. Much cheaper, and probably a lot more effective, PR-wise.
I’ve personally noticed little of that benefit in the past few decades. It was certainly true in the 1960s, but even by the time Apollo 13 was launched, the glow had pretty much worn off.
It’s kinda like self-esteem. The best way to get either self-esteem or hope for the future is by dealing with the problems on your plate in the here and now, and we’ve got no shortage of them.
I know I’ve felt that way ever since that shuttle broke up on re-entry just a few years ago.
Yes, Canada has a space program. The Canadian Space Agency is responsible for the “Canadarm”, the remote manipulator in the shuttle and on ISS. It also flies a number of satellites, trains astronauts that fly shuttle missions, and is a partner in various exploration initiatives. Canada has contributed to 18 different shuttle missions in one way or another.
Canada was the third country to put a satellite into space, BTW. Alouette 1 was built in Canada, but launched by NASA.
Have there been any Canadian astronauts, yet?
Canada has had 10 astronauts. Eight have been into space.
The most famous is probably Marc Garneau who has been on 3 shuttle missions.