I’m all for the expense for producing a permanent moon station which I think will make great strides in interplanetory exploration.
Earth is being poluted…oceans fished out…water supplies will be limited…Many scientists predict that within 50- 100 years from now, earth will be unable to support its people.
!!! Cite?
Here’s an interesting editorial fromSlate arguing against a moon base. I have to say I agree with his “What should NASA do?” paragraph. NASA’s priorities seem a bit out of whack when it comes to crewed missions vs. other missions.
Well, sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes a line of technological development runs into a dead end. What breakthroughs have been made lately in strong AI or nanotechnology or neural-electronic interface?
And the Moon has no oceans, limited water supplies, and far less ability to support a population than even an Earth far more polluted than the one we’ve got would have.
Check out a copy of Heinlein’s The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and read the last chapter very carefully.
Here is an interesting article that was just posted to CNN. It names an initial price tag of $104 billion, but then goes on to say that they won’t name a final figure because they just “don’t know yet.”
Basically. Even given an absolute worst-case Malthusian sort of collapse in 50-100 years, humanity will have an infinitely better chance at surviving on Earth than anywhere else imaginable. There’s simply no way that we can set up a self-sufficient, long-term colony given current or near-future technology.
The hundreds of billions would be better spent keeping this planet from falling apart.
Care to quote and/or summarize that chapter? I don’t have a copy, and can’t get to a library any time soon.
BrainGlutton: Quoting articles to you does not prove or disprove my statement…If you believe that the oceans are NOT being fished out at a rapid rate…that millions of acres of African green have not disappeared as a result of climactic events, over population, Lake Chad has become only a shadow of itself than I challenge you to cite references…which prove me wrong. I’m here to learn…I do not propose that the moon be utilized as a secondary source for earth population…The base is to help enable us to scientifically make space travel more feasible sooner rather than later.
OK, I read it twice last night - it’s only 4 pages long. So??
The point was that Manuel perceived the Moon’s economic future lay not in its being used as a farm (i.e., using its own resources, such as they were – mainly a limitless supply of sunlight), but as a way station or transshipment point at the top of an industrialized planet’s gravity well.
From the Slate link in mrklutz’ post:
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress is quite possibly Heinlein’s best novel.
It’s still fiction.
Your missing the point, which is not that the Moon might be used as a way station for small exploratory missions to the rest of the Solar System, but that it might be used as a launching pad for colonization and industrialization of the Solar System, as well as a transshipment point when such colonies are established. You know, like New York City grew to an important megalopolis after completion of the Erie Canal made it the preferred port of entry for commerce between Europe and the American interior.
Only because a change in mode of transportation was required at the coast. But if you have a ship in space, going somewhere else in space, you’ll be in a spaceship all the way. Why make a stop on the way, so soon after leaving on the way out, or almost to your destination, on the way back? Just make the trip direct.
That in mind, I could see a moon base as an “anchor point”. Just as very large ships anchor offshore sometimes and send smaller launch boats onshore, perhaps ships hailing from other parts of the solar system could dock at a moon base, and smaller shuttle-type vehicles could bring passenger and cargo to Earth.
Assuming your liner can’t re-enter, you can send tenders between it and Earth just as easily, and probably much more so, from Earth orbit.
FYI, SF writer Spider Robinson has just begun an 8-month term as the writer-in-residence at Vancouver’s H.R. MacMillan Space Center – and anybody interested at all in this thread should dig his first two articles (pdf files).
See also here.
I would guess that cargo transfer* would be easier in a gravitational field. Much less room for accident or loss.
*I realize this raises the question of what sort of cargo would be coming from that far off, but my opinion is that we don’t know enough about what’s out there to say for sure there is NOTHING we might someday want to ship back.