Just to give the OP a better appreciation for how inefficient a manned mission to the lunar surface is. For comparison during the Apollo era, the amount of fuel required to get one pound from Earth into lunar orbit and safely return it to Earth was about 400 lbs. However, when you look at a manned lunar landing during the Apollo era, the fuel ratio for landing one pound on the moon and safely returning it to Earth, that ratio jumps from 400/1 to 9000/1. The fella that explained this to me on another forum also mentioned that rocket technology hasn’t improved significantly enough since the Apollo era to take a significant bite out of that 9000/1 ratio. I’m not sure what kind of ratio the Soviet manned lunar landing concept would have been with its lone occupant spacecraft?
There’s still a huge difference in landing a payload vs. landing a payload + the rocket needed to lift off. The Apollo Lunar Module’s ascent stage by itself should be enough to get 2 astronauts to the surface on a one-way trip, because landing on an airless body should take as much energy as taking off from it. If I read the wikipedia page correctly, the ascent stage was only 4.7 tons gross weight, and rest of the LM (15.2 tons total) is the descent stage and the fuel necessary for landing. So, landing 2 people and bringing them back requires a rocket 3 times larger than sending 2 people on a one-way trip.
ETA: number corrected
The US soft-landed several Surveyor probes before Apollo. Their earth weight upon lunar landing was about 650 lbs. The program cost relative to Apollo was tiny.
Two out of seven Surveyors crashed into the moon: Surveyor program - Wikipedia
The cost of safely landing and returning a human to earth is vastly higher. As already mentioned there is no current launch vehicle that could lift an Apollo-scale lunar payload, roughly 300,000 lbs. Falcon Heavy can lift about half that but it’s not man-rated. The options would include a very spartan Gemini-type lander: LM Langley Light
Or two Falcon Heavy launches and orbital assembly.
Also the cost includes much more than the launch vehicle. A huge industrial complex is required - spacecraft design and test, astronaut training, etc.
For an unmanned probe you can cut corners, try again if they crash.
For human-rated applications, the spacecraft and propulsion system must be tested in a space vacuum and thermal environment. Just for propulsion it takes a facility like this: http://nimr.org/systems/rockets/J4cutawa.jpg
To test the spacecraft in a vacuum it takes a facility like this. This huge structure is a vacuum chamber (note people at bottom): https://goo.gl/images/fEkqNY
…bolding mine.
This can’t be stressed enough. Anyone who knows about the Apollo missions and/or has been to the Apollo/Saturn V Center at the Kennedy Space Center can tell you. They had no business going into space or even landing on the moon with their limited technology at the time.
Guys that made their living as former test pilots felt the risks were acceptable as did the lone geologist that went with them but there’s no denying that after Apollo 13, many felt it was only a matter of time before a mission would have an incident that would not have a happy ending. As much as I admire what they did, I can certainly understand why missions started to be cancelled. It does also make me wonder about manned missions to Mars and is it really wise to even consider them. I’ve read quite a bit about the Apollo missions and it pretty amazing how complicated it becomes when people are included in space missions. I think we need to wait for a better propulsion system that would greatly reduce the time to get there and back. If that never happens, best to stick to rovers imho.
No, but it does HAVE gold and other materials. And something else…water and other materials that can be used to make stuff like rocket fuel. In a much smaller gravity well than the Earth. H3 MIGHT be a thing, but the moon has plenty of economic incentives to entice companies to it even if that never becomes a thing (and even if it does it would make more sense to use it as a refueling and supply station while going out to the gas giants for your H3). IF we ever have a real space based economy that is going out to exploit things like NEOs or other mineral rich objects, zero G manufacturing and the like. Seriously, you are downplaying the moon from ignorance if you think that’s all it has to offer. It has tons of potential for economic exploitation AND there is the engineering problem we’d have to solve of keeping folks alive in very hostile places that would be good for future human exploration and habitation AND it has some serious scientific potential.
Tells you how out-of-place our priorities were/are, huh? I think at the time of the Space Race our country was surging economically and politically around the world in the aftermath of WWII. We had the time and resources to land a bauble on the moon and show the rest of the world (especially the Soviets) our stuff! We are not in the same time or place and the world is different now, and as others have stated, most countries (as well as us) have more pressing matters to deal with now. If some private concern feel the need, has the resources, and figures there is enough upside to go back, it will likely happen, but so far “bragging rights” just is not enough upside.
If you gave ME a billion dollars I certainly wouldn’t blow every single penny of it to go to the moon. Nor would I expect any country to blow every single penny they had to go to the moon.
However, given a billion dollars, I very likely would a substantial down payment to SpaceX to be one of the first civilians to go to the moon.
It certainly didn’t get a lot of publicity (at least here in the US), but the Russians sent three Luna missions that not only landed a probe on the moon, but also returned actual samples to earth - the Luna 16, 20, and 24. That’s about as close to the Apollo missions as you can get without including actual people.
These were all carried out before 1980.
People keep saying that, and companies that live by economics keep not going to the moon. Saying that we can fly to the moon, mine some element, and fly it back to earth while making a profit is a damn bit easier than actually doing it. It’s been 50 years since we are on the moon, and there are no companies that I know of that are seriously exploring that which you are advocating.
And then there is the Star Trek-ian meme that “we need to get off this rock for the human race to survive and thrive as explorers have always done!” Would it be cool to have a man on Mars? Sure. But what then? We are never going to be self-sufficient there, so we’ll always need a life line to earth. I did not intend to be snarkly to XT’s post above. I just believe that we’d be better served taking action on global warming, pollution, and clean energy than kidding ourselves that we are a decade away from warp drive.
SpaceX seems to really want to go to the moon, though I’m not sure to dig up stuff (Musk seems obsessed with colonizing off-world). I’m impressed with their innovations in reusable rockets. I think if any corporation puts a man there it will be them.
But I really, REALLY want to see man on mars in my lifetime (next 30 years or so), preferably with a modest colony. I don’t think we will “never” be self sufficient on mars. I just don’t think it will be anytime soon (and 2030s seems optimistic to say the least).
That’s all well and good. But I’d ask, to what end is this money being spent, and what is the opportunity cost?
People keep saying that we could go to the new world, mine raw materials and bring them back to the old country, but it will never be a thing…
Seriously, it’s been 50 years so if we haven’t done it yet it can’t be done? That’s really silly, especially considering that even today it’s still not, quite, economically feasible since the launch costs are still so high. But they have been coming down…and countries as well as private companies have been looking into doing it. We will, eventually, but there are a whole lot of other things that have to be in place first, like that whole orbital industry and asteroid/NEO mining system that doesn’t exist today that would make the moon so favorable.
Yeah, sort of like those dreamers talking about putting stuff in orbit…THAT will never be a thing, I’m sure. Why would we need too, after all? This stuff isn’t ‘Star Trek-ian’…we are in the first stages of it now. Companies are looking into it now and doing feasibility studies of it now. Countries are also looking into it now. Several countries plan moon missions with an eye towards exploitation or scientific advancement (or both) as well as longer duration human habitation now. We don’t need any magic space technology to do this stuff…it’s simply that the economic reasons aren’t really there…yet. Kind of like how the New World was discovered in the late 1400’s but real systematic economic exploitation didn’t start for decades or nearly a century later, and other European powers didn’t really get into it until after even that. You DID come off as snarky, and in a kind of ridiculous way. We don’t need warp drive or Spock ears to do this stuff, and the fact that it’s taken 50 years of rather lethargic and unfocused manned exploration doesn’t mean it is impossible. I’m sure if Stranger were still about he’d agree with you…we haven’t done any of this stuff so therefore until we do it can’t be done, but I think you guys are the nay sayers in the early 1900’s saying it’s impossible and crazy to think we could ever put men on the moon and get them back…or even that something like a jet engine was never going to happen. We haven’t done it and we’ve had flight in the form of balloons for well over a century, so not going to happen…
There is very little scientific rationale needed to send humans into space. You can get more bangs for your bucks in general using unmanned systems.
So what are the other rationales?
Prestige? Already been covered. Being second is hardly worth the cost to most nations. China is sort of special. It’s rising quickly, has a president-for-life with the usual dictator issues, easily suppressed opposition to such waste, etc. But it’s still going to be a tremendous stretch for them.
Colonization? But what are we going to do with a lunar colony? If a quick there-and-back mission is ungodly expensive, think of the costs of creating, maintaining, supplying a Moon base. No one has that sort of money.
The short answer is that no other country has put a man on the moon because there’s no good reason to do it that comes anywhere near justifying the cost. Kennedy’s vision, as exciting as it was, was entirely motivated by the politics of the Cold War era.
Here’s an interesting bit of history from the NASA archives. In conversations with James Webb, Kennedy noted that “… the Soviet Union has made this a test of the system. So that’s why we’re doing it”, and then shortly after, stating “… otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money because I’m not that interested in space”.
The article goes on to make the following observation:
During the 21 November meeting, Webb told Kennedy, “And I have some feeling that you might not have been as successful on Cuba if we hadn’t flown John Glenn and demonstrated we had a real overall technical capability here.” Webb was referring to the recent Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the United States and the Soviet Union had reached the brink of war. The Soviets agreed to withdraw their nuclear-tipped missiles from Cuba in an action that many people perceived as a humiliating defeat and that ultimately led to the downfall of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.
Kennedy replied, “We agree. That’s why we wanna put this program…. That’s the dramatic evidence that we’re preeminent in space.”
The idea of getting economic benefits from mining the moon and the like is just sci-fi fantasy at this point. The costs of getting equipment to the moon and raw materials back to earth would have to come down by orders of magnitude before this was economical, and the ability to build and fuel spaceships on site is also pretty much fantasy right now, the reality off in the distant future. A manned mission to Mars is probably more beneficial, scientifically and in terms of technology development, and I’m not even sure about that. The reality is that the most exciting and scientifically rewarding missions to date have all been unmanned – the numerous Mars landers, the fantastic trips through the solar system of the Voyagers, the amazing New Horizons flyby, and many others.
The world has changed a great deal since Kennedy and the moon landings, and being able to boast of national technological superiority – and using it as a strategic military deterrent – is neither necessary nor relevant today.
Unmanned systems are very limited, even if we are only talking about exploration. You could basically do what all the robots on Mars have done in the last 3 decades in the first month or so of a manned mission…and you’d still have over a year more for that team on the ground to do other stuff. If we are talking about resource exploitation the same is going to be true. That said, automation is going to be key as well. But it’s still going to take humans at some point…even today creating a be all and do all automated robot system is not possible.
As for colonization, I do expect a lunar colony at some point. I think that the economics will drive that as I expect the moon to be pivotal in servicing the facilities I expect in and around Earth as well as a transshipment point for asteroid exploitation. But I don’t expect huge colonies on either the moon or mars…maybe a few 10’s of thousands of people at most. I DO expect large scale off planet colonization at some point, and I think the moon will play a huge role in that, but I expect it to be very large rotating habitats, not colonies on the planets or moons of the solar system.
Could I get one of you in this thread who keep trotting out the ‘science fiction’ line to actually define what you mean by that? Because pretty obviously many of your definitions of ‘science fiction’ radically differ from my own.
Preventing the complete extinction of the human race? Some people wouldn’t put a price on that.
Many people believe that global warming will suck and a ton of people will die or wish they were dead if they don’t. But complete and utter extinction of all humans? Nah.
Indeed, Mars is more inhospitable to human life than Earth will ever be. But the chance of them both being blown away by a killer asteroid are pretty small.
The political landscape and national mindset matter.
How a country sees itself and feels about itself matters. It has motivation built upon irrational fears of what its enemy can do.
The fail here is not being able to be there in the late 50’s and 60’s, when we felt this certain something (some can; I can’t) when Russians beat us at space race milestones. One can not sufficiently convey the red scare and psychological dark cloud of fear.
Humans pushed forward, and in the right conditions, with the right resources, and the single most powerful motivation known to man (FEAR), then stunning advances are made, whose ROI isn’t precisely measured in piles of money.
China is getting itself into that situation. Not completely analogous to the USA, but it has a series of things going on that will push them forward.
Adding up $ and calculating an accountant’s ROI on a spreadsheet is the work of a fool – one who misses the whole point and the reality of the human condition and the entire landscape, which is almost impossible to quantify.
No country is going to the moon to drop off humans because it takes an absolutely amazing and unmatched country to do it, in the right political climate, among other things. Likely, it’s the kind of country people die to immigrate to.
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While I understand the desire and the initial belief that sailing ships in the 17th century are good comparison, they just don’t hold up. Colonies were rapidly financial beneficial. They were largely self-sustainable. They certainly didn’t need absolutely every fricking thing required to survive including but not limited to food, clothing, shelter, oxygen, water, medicine, power etc., etc., etc. My main issue is that no matter how much you drag into space (and to the moon or Mars) there just isn’t any point where they will be self sufficient. And if that’s the case, how will the cost ever be beneficial? And esoteric reasons such as “destiny” aren’t going to cut it.
Increasingly we see smart public scientists (Bill Nye would be the latest) stating that colonies in space are never going to happen. How many people are on the space station now, 250 miles away, 6? But you envision tens of thousands?