If there was, we’d have 50,000 Americans there already.
I read my own link. I chose the wiki entry because it seemed fair minded.
If you do a google news search on it you’ll find many articles which are much more optimistic about it.
Well, that settles it! We cannot cede the High Frontier to the treacherous Canuck menace! On to Luna!
Me too. It’s definitely too much work for a side issue. 
Main thing is, it’s a few orders of magnitude less than a moon base.
I can see where you’re going with this, and there’s a good conversation there for another day, but I don’t think it’s germane to where I’m coming from: as a taxpayer now, with the past being past (no matter what Faulkner said), I’m willing to see a certain portion of my tax dollars invested in pure research, but for me, a moon base is a degree or two of magnitude beyond my limit.
And from a practical POV, I continue to believe that later is a much better time than now for humanity to go into space, because we’ll start off from a much higher level of technological development. If we’re worried about the Earth getting clobbered by asteroids in the meantime (which IMHO is worth worrying about), I’d research better means of tracking known asteroids and detecting new ones, and ways of deflecting their paths if they’re going to hit the Earth. After all, we’ve already got radar, rockets, and nukes.
Reasonable enough.
So you’ve got the ‘fair-minded’ source, and the ‘more optimistic’ ones - maybe a bit overly optimistic to justify spending a trillion bucks?
Seems to me the steps here are:
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Send some unmanned probes up to the Moon that can return with soil/dust/whateveryacallit samples to evaluate for He-3 presence and abundance.
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Figure out some ballpark estimates of how much He-3 you can just rake up off the lunar surface, and cost estimates of getting it back here.
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Meanwhile, using the He-3 available on Earth, work on fusion power generation.
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When we get to the break-even point, power-wise, here on Earth, we can enter the added power and other costs of shipping He-3 from the Moon still allows for profitable fusion power generation.
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If so, we go to the Moon, load He-3 onto barges, and chuck them back down here.
I sincerely hope that this project does not take funding away from future space telescope programs. That and unmanned space probes are where NASA should be spending our money in my opinion.
Wouldn’t a telescope on the Moon’s surface be just as good as one floating in orbit?
Where does the trillion dollars come from? I keep hearing that on the boards but what I’ve read in the news it’s expected to be $100 billion spread over ten years. Even expecting the government to go wildly over budget $1 trillion seems high.
Would you happen to have a cite for the $1 trillion figure?
It would be more limited in the directions it could be pointed, and be harder to access for maintenance.
Well, it would be just as good at imaging, since it has the same freedom from distortion by surrounding air.
But it would NOT be just as good, due to operational problems:
- on the moon, it could only look at part of the sky, where an orbital one can be re-aimed in any direction.
- on the moon, it is further away from earth. That means longer transmission times for receiving commands & sending results back. Might also require more power for transmissions. Power is a very limiting factor in space.
- speaking of power, an orbiting telescope can have solar panels always in sunlight. On the moon, to achieve this might limit the places where the telescope could be located.
- any servicing would be more difficult. Besides being farther away and needing more fuel to get there and back, you also need to spend fuel to get down into the moon’s gravity well, and back out again. (Only about 1/6th of earth’s gravity, but still more than an orbiting telescope, which is effectively zero.)
- possibly, the lunar gravity would affect the instruments in the telescope. They might have to be designed differently, or maybe will just need a bit more power to operate, thus increasing operational cost. We’d need an expert (a rocket scientist?) to know for sure on this.
Here’s an article quoting a $500 billion or more price for the moon base project. Admittedly, this is from nebulous “experts” (not that I disbelieve them). No official estimate has come out yet, as far as I can tell.
Where do you see the $100 bn? Again, that’s the cost I’ve seen cited for the earlier proposal for manned missions to the moon, excluding any kind of base.This news article states that NASA estimated that it would cost $104 bn just to get to a first manned moon landing. It also quotes someone giving an estimate of $500 bn-$800 bn to get to the point of an operational moon base.
We do not have a hundred billion dollars to blow, let alone something approaching a trillion, when there’s a federal debt of eight freaking trillion dollars.
Maybe. (Longish debate about the merits of a moon-based observatory.)
Fact is, there are a lot of good places in space, like the Earth-Sun lagrange points (where there are already some very successful telescopes), where one can place a telescope. The only thing I can think of that might be better done on the moon would be an array of radio telescopes, something that’s probably too big to set up in deep space. IANA astronomer, however.
I can’t find the exact article I read earlier but here’s one stating about the same thing. Most of the other articles I’ve come across say $107 billion just for the first trip but that NASA plans on staying within their current $17/year budget (Ha, ha, ha! Even I don’t buy that one).
That’s $17 billion/year budget.
Sure. From your perspective I can certainly understand how a moon base isn’t worth the cost. Sort of the same way that I’m sure for both of us our Iraqi adventure isn’t worth the money pissed down the drain. For my part, I’d rather have the moon base…too bad its not a choice.
It all boils down to whats important to the individual. For me, space exploration/exploitation and (eventual) colonization are important and should be pursued. I can understand and respect that not everyone sees things that way however.
-XT
@XTisme - nice link on Space Hoists
I keep thinking about the impact of the Ski Lift on the use of Harrier jump jets, also wonder about stages of dirigibles that gently hoist things out to a distance where ‘escape’ is ‘inexpensive’.
Once we can get things up and down reliably and cheaply, then things like a moon base would be a spin off.
If a telescope were part of a permanent manned Moonbase it would easier to access for maintenance. No need to launch a special mission – the base crew would be there to fix it.
A very Utopian view that needs every country on Earth(not just western nations) seriously attempting to drastically reduce pollution levels ,reduce the use and recycle non sustainable resources and not just stabilise but actively reduce population growth.
Of course that would also need an immediate end to all wars and terrorism.
And no billions of dollars/pounds /euros ending up in third and first world politicians Swiss bank accounts.
If its so easy why haven’t we done this already?
In contrast a project with a definite target in mind such as the moonbase while not being easy will still be much simpler to achieve then any foggy “Eden” type idea that would have to rely on the co-operation of all politicians worldwide and their electorates just as a prerequisite.
And that still wouldn’t solve the problem of vital resources running out or the statistically due Earth impact asteroid strike.
The rate of scientific progress isn’t increasing in a steady curve but in leaps and bounds so saying we wont have efficient use spacecraft for at least 50 years etc. is like hot air balloonists of the 19c saying that they wont be able to achieve transatlantic ,commercial H.A.B. flights for at least 150 years.
If the human race doesn’t expand outside of the home world ,then it will die out not in the distant future but sooner then you think even if there isn’t a nuclear war instigated by the new atomic club.
The window of opportunity is fast closing.
You first have to send the crew to the base, remember?
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There are over 200 nations on Earth. Many of them don’t contribute significantly to the problem.
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Of those that do, we’re the biggest holdout to doing something about it. If we could just bribe ourselves into participating…but where, oh where, would we get that money from???
Uhhuh, suuuuuure. 
Who said it was easy? But we kinda need to do it, regardless. Why haven’t we started? Because of Republicans. Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh. :rolleyes:
Yeah, preventing drastic climate change will be looked at as downright Edenic in a half-century, if we don’t act well before then.
Having a moonbase isn’t likely to keep vital resources from running out anytime soon. And there are things we can do from here, much more cheaply, about a potential asteroid strike.
Even if we have a moonbase, do you think it’ll be self-sustaining if we get clobbered?
Did I say that? No, I said it makes sense to wait for 50 years to build them, when technology, even absent big breakthroughs, will have greatly improved.
Reminds me of a bit from a Joe Haldeman short story - maybe I’ll dig it out later. But the likelihood that we will do anything to earth that causes us all to die is quite mimimal; humanity may well have already survived one major asteroid strike. So I think we’ve got a bit of time before we have to colonize other worlds to assure the continuation of the species. In the meantime, I’d rather preserve the continuation of most of the species, rather than just the few that can be saved from a cataclysm through spaceflight.