Why we have not returned to the moon

[Tuckerfan]

Cardinal we know that there’s lots of variation in the make up of the Moon from the samples the Apollo astronauts brought back. To quote A Man on the Moon

The Apollo 12 samples also differed in composition from the Apollo 11 rocks and one another.

(p. 367)

The geologists had said the rocks of the lunar highlands would be different, and these surely were, unlike any of the samples they’d seen in the LRL.

(p.374)

As for an outcrop of true bedrock, that was something no astronaut had yet identified. The promise of outcrops, up on the slopes of the mountains, and perhaps at the rille, was one of Hadley’s lures.

(p. 406)

NASA’s take on why we need to go back to the Moon.

The point of the “Genesis rock” is that it’s only slightly younger than the Earth. So, not only is it a sample of what kind of material was floating around in the early days of the Moon’s formation, it also tells us how old the Moon is. (4.5 billion years, the Earth’s 4.6 billion.)

Gus Grissom on astronauts being killed

If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

(Found the quote thanks to Arden Ranger) Yeah, NASA does have some safety issues, and they periodically suffer bouts of “Go fever,” but the blame doesn’t lie solely with NASA. Unlike most other Federal agencies, NASA’s budget has remained relatively frozen since the 1970s. NASA was also forced into using the space shuttle, even though they knew it wasn’t going to perform as well as promised. Cite. Still, even that hasn’t caused the astronauts to think that it’s unsafe. And based on this unscientific survery, there’s folks willing to go, no matter what the cost.

As for why having Schimdt on the Moon was so important, there’s a number of reasons for that:[ul]
[li]An expert on the ground in an area can spot things that even a well-trained amatuer cannot.[/li][li]Hi-res video is still not up to the sensativity level of the human eye.[/li][li]Context is everything to a geologist and because Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell didn’t detail the context of where they found the rocks on the Apollo 14, the analysis of the rocks was much harder for the scientists back on Earth. Schimdt made no such mistake.[/li][li]Humans are random creatures and do things for the heck of it. A robot probe only does what it’s told.[/li][/ul]

OK, I hate snarky people, even here, but you just contradicted yourself in succeeding sentences, with the second one pretty much proving my point. There are investors for projects with foreseeable payouts. In this case, there is a $10 million prize, plus the very real prospect of stealing NASA’s business for putting up satellites.

First of all, NASA’s pretty much out of the satellite business. Most birds are launched by private companies, ESA, and the Russians. Second, it took years for the guy responsible for the X-Prize to raise the money, and none of the teams will make their money back if they win the prize. Many of the backers do not want their identities revealed because they’re afraid it’ll shoot their credibility. Cite and cite. So even though there are investors willing to pony up the money, many of them don’t want people to know about it. And at least some of them don’t expect to make a profit any time soon.

“Of course I won’t recoup the money I put into X Prize in the next 10 years,” he says, refilling cups all around. “If space tourism works, some folks will make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But that’s not my focus. History has proved that exploration is always worth the cost and risk. There’s just no way to guarantee human survival unless we move off this planet - and our days as a space-faring race start the moment someone wins the X Prize.”

In short, it’s a tough sell, no matter how much money is floating around out there.

I guess we really are on the same page. You can’t come up with a political or economic argument to go back to the moon yet, either.

Actually, I can come up with political and economic arguments, however, those arguments hinge on “if’s” and require people to be forward thinking enough. It also requires folks to have an understanding of the items that are at stake here.

From a political standpoint, it makes sense if one has a hostile power on the Earth which is capable of manned spaceflight. Why? Well, for starters, a lunar colony (and this will become important in a bit) would be cheaper to operate on the Moon, than it would in Earth orbit. The colony can be built using local materials (warning .pdf) and oxygen can be easily extracted from lunar soil, so there’s little need to spend the money to ship the stuff up from Earth. Food can be grown in greenhouses (with broadspectrum lights for the lunar nights), so there’s no need to ship that up. Once the base is established, you have an observation post that’s pretty damn well difficult for an enemy to take out. Not to mention, with such a base, you’ve got an endless supply of rocks you can cheaply throw at the Earth using an electromagnetic railgun. Of course, at present we don’t have an enemy capable of doing that. (Though China is planning on going to the Moon, and if relations with the Chinese sour enough, we might start looking at going back ourselves.)

The economic reasons hinge on us being able to develop a cheap method of getting into space. The X-Prize might give us that and so might the space elevator. Hilton has said that if someone can come up with an inexpensive way to put people in orbit, they’ll build a hotel in space. Once a cheap way to get in orbit is found, lots of things will open up for humanity. The Moon becomes a cheaper target for tourism, if nothing else. However, because of the benefits of space based manufacturing, you’ll see a gradual migration of manufacturing from the Earth to orbit. Certain items, ships, houses, cars, and other large items will remain being built on Earth (however, many of the items which go into them, will probably be built in orbit) but lots of other things will be built in orbit. Also, I expect retirement homes (for the very wealthy, no doubt) will be a big seller. A zero-gee or low-gee environment would probably be easier on the elderly, and might enable them to live longer lives.

From a scientific standpoint (I know you didn’t ask about it, but no sense in not covering all bases here), there’s benefits from having an observatory on the far side of the Moon. Also, since the Moon is not subject to weathering (other than meteorite impacts), it’s a perfect lab for studying what conditions were like near the beginning of the solar system. Additionally, the meteors which have impacted upon the Moon and can be found, will yield useful information about other celestial bodies and the origins of the cosmos.

Finally, there’s the unknown factors. Because we haven’t spent a lot of time crawling around on the Moon mucking the place up, we might as well place a “Here be dragons” note on any maps of it. We don’t know what someone might discover, either on the Moon or in Earth orbit, or be inspired to discover by being in those places.

[Bryan_Ekers]

*Originally posted by qts *
**I’d like us to return to the moon to create a large observatory on the dark side. **

There is no “dark side” of the moon. There’s a side always facing away from Earth (due to a tidal lock) but as the moon rotates, all of the surface becomes illuminated at some point. Since the moon has no atmosphere, though, you could see the stars even in broad daylight. The sun would be shining, but the sky would be pitch black. The only reason the stars don’t appear in various Apollo-mission photographs is becuase the exposure time on the cameras weren’t long enough (too long an exposure means all the light colours start to run together and an astronaut in a white spacesuit would appear as a big blob).

An observatory on the surface of the moon would have two weeks of daylight and two weeks of “night”. The temperature swings would be extreme, which raises a whole buttload of engineering problems. Anyhoo, during the lunar night phase, star photography is much easier, assuming your equipment doesn’t freeze. Conceivably, the obsevatory could work in cycles, spreading out solar panels during the two-week “day” to absorb energy and charge up the batteries, then doing all its observation time at “night”.

Depending on where you put the observatory, Earth would either be visible all the time, visible none of the time, or slowly dipping slightly above and below the horizon (librations). Unless the Earth is visible at least some of the time, the observatory won’t be able to send back its observations because no line-of-sight radio communications would be possible. You could put a satellite in orbit around the moon to act as a relay, I suppose.

Overall, a lunar observatory is mildly interesting, and would certainly be high on the to-do list of a permanent lunar base, but we could already build orbiting observatories (i.e. the Hubble) with a lot less trouble.

[Tuckerfan]

*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers *
**Overall, a lunar observatory is mildly interesting, and would certainly be high on the to-do list of a permanent lunar base, but we could already build orbiting observatories (i.e. the Hubble) with a lot less trouble. **

You’re only thinking about the visible spectrum, there Bryan. A radio telescope placed on the far side of the Moon, would be free of terrestrial radio interfence, which isn’t easy to do unless you put the thing very far away in space, or on the back side of the Moon.

[Cardinal]

If we die, we want people to accept it. We’re in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

based on this unscientific survery, there’s folks willing to go, no matter what the cost.

Well, we have a difference of opinion, I guess. There are always people willing to risk themselves for a shot at glory. Someone’s going to get seriously hurt flipping motorcycles in the X Games, and then they’re going to have a decision to make. I’M not going to be that person.

It has been known for some time that, in order to persuade a reluctant Congress to reject Sen. Walter Mondale’s campaign against the Shuttle, NASA told outrageous distortions about the frequency with which it could be launched, and thus its cost-effectiveness.

That quote is from your linked article. This jibes quite well with what Richard Feynman said in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.” NASA has been completely unrealistic in safety and cost-effectiveness statements, because apparently if you’re lying for a good reason, that excuses it. I honestly think some people should go to jail for this. Lying to Congress has to be a crime, right?

Concerning whether astronauts feel safe in the shuttle, isn’t it true that NASA has been shown to have been negligent (again) in its safety inspections and so on? Feynman talked about an attitude of “We don’t find a problem in our other inspections, so we might as well quit doing them.”

First of all, NASA’s pretty much out of the satellite business. Most birds are launched by private companies, ESA, and the Russians.

Well, it doesn’t matter whose satellite business they’re stealing, they’re still getting the business (potentially) I hope that I’m assuming correctly, that a vehicle like this could be used as a better platform for getting satellites into decent orbit.

Second, it took years for the guy responsible for the X-Prize to raise the money, and none of the teams will make their money back if they win the prize.

I bet it sure did take some time to raise money for a $10 million prize. A prize is not an investment. It’s a gift. That’s a heck of a big gift. It’s not related to our discussion of whether going to the Moon is a good investment. As for the teams, what I meant was that $10 million is a great way to start defraying cost of investment, and the payoff is soooo potentially huge that eventually they did find someone. Mind you, this is for suborbit vehicles, not moon landers.

Many of the backers do not want their identities revealed because they’re afraid it’ll shoot their credibility. So even though there are investors willing to pony up the money, many of them don’t want people to know about it. And at least some of them don’t expect to make a profit any time soon.

I’m not sure of the point of the fact that people don’t want to be identified yet. In any case, the “any time soon” part is acceptable to many people to be part of something cool, and if the payoff is really big and actually foreseeable, then a few years delay is ok.

for starters, a lunar colony (and this will become important in a bit) would be cheaper to operate on the Moon, than it would in Earth orbit. The colony can be built using local materials (warning .pdf) and oxygen can be easily extracted from lunar soil, so there’s little need to spend the money to ship the stuff up from Earth. Food can be grown in greenhouses

So then, it’s only outrageously expensive, not appallingly expensive?

Not to mention, with such a base, you’ve got an endless supply of rocks you can cheaply throw at the Earth using an electromagnetic railgun.

So the political reason you can think of is to rain metoerites down on your enemies? Well, I guess anything’s worth the cost if you hate someone enough.

Also, I expect retirement homes (for the very wealthy, no doubt) will be a big seller. A zero-gee or low-gee environment would probably be easier on the elderly, and might enable them to live longer lives.

Is there some effect that outweighs the loss of muscle mass as they lose resistance?

Because we haven’t spent a lot of time crawling around on the Moon mucking the place up, we might as well place a “Here be dragons” note on any maps of it.

Yeah, well, with the stuff going on around here, I’m just not inspired. We’re supposed to take money, time, and brainpower from solving things on earth and devote them on the enormous scale necessary for a moon colony? I just don’t care enough. And the parallels between this and the sailing explorers are very small. Those expeditions cost almost nothing compared to what you’re talking about. The vehicle was in relatively mass production, there wasn’t any weird life support needed, and restocking could be done along the way and at the destination.

This is turning into something like those Israeli/Palestinian threads in GD, but more polite. I think we just have irreconcilable mindsets, maybe. Well, I’m not against it in principle, just at the current costs, and with only vague “what ifs” as payoffs.

[ltfire]

*Originally posted by Cardinal *
**I don’t think many Americans at all would be willing to spend the money to back to the moon now. Then, it was worth it to say, “Stick it, Leonid.”

I certainly can’t see the point in sending people to Mars when we could do so much more for people right here.

“Let’s spend billions of dollars to send a few people to another place so we can eventually colonize it. Each trip will extremely dangerous, extremely expensive, and consume enormous amounts of time of some of our most brilliant people. Oh, and the new place has no atmosphere at all, and no water. What a place to live!!” **

Here’s a point to ponder, for what it’s worth to the topic. If any country went full tilt on colonizing any planet, who the hell would go? I’m thinking that by the time it was feasible, anyone living now - wouldn’t be. Are they/we planning on putting up posters looking for people that want a Mars post office box? Why would you leave the great planet Earth to begin with? I’m sure there are a couple or three thousand Luke Skywalker wannabes running around to Star Wars conventions, but what of the rest of us with half a brain?
(not ranting, just wondering)
:o

[Bryan_Ekers]

Well, if they gave me a female replicant that looked liked Sean Young circa 1982, I’d consider going.

[Tuckerfan]

That quote is from your linked article. This jibes quite well with what Richard Feynman said in “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman.” NASA has been completely unrealistic in safety and cost-effectiveness statements, because apparently if you’re lying for a good reason, that excuses it. I honestly think some people should go to jail for this. Lying to Congress has to be a crime, right?

Actually, IIRC, it isn’t a crime to lie to Congress unless you’re under oath, and even then the penalties aren’t very severe. (Haven’t heard anything about tobacco excutives being jailed when they said cigarettes aren’t addictive before Congress.)

Concerning whether astronauts feel safe in the shuttle, isn’t it true that NASA has been shown to have been negligent (again) in its safety inspections and so on? Feynman talked about an attitude of “We don’t find a problem in our other inspections, so we might as well quit doing them.”

So, what’s your point? The astronauts are intimately involved with the inner workings of NASA, they know what inspections are being done and what ones aren’t. They’re also the ones putting their lives on the line. IMHO, if they’re confident about the job NASA’s doing, then who am I to argue?

I bet it sure did take some time to raise money for a $10 million prize. A prize is not an investment. It’s a gift. That’s a heck of a big gift. It’s not related to our discussion of whether going to the Moon is a good investment. As for the teams, what I meant was that $10 million is a great way to start defraying cost of investment, and the payoff is soooo potentially huge that eventually they did find someone. Mind you, this is for suborbit vehicles, not moon landers.

The X-Prize is a non-profit foundation, those folks who contributed to it got a tax deduction for doing so, and he still had trouble raising the cash. And from what I’ve read, most of the teams don’t expect it to make a dent in what they’re spending.

Well, it doesn’t matter whose satellite business they’re stealing, they’re still getting the business (potentially) I hope that I’m assuming correctly, that a vehicle like this could be used as a better platform for getting satellites into decent orbit.

Nope. The X-Prize vehicles are strictly “meat machines.” They get people into sub-orbit, that’s it. They could be modified to getting sats or whatever you into space, but as NASA’s discovered: What’s the point? A heavy lift vehicle that’s dedicated to simply putting stuff into orbit is better (and cheaper) than a hybrid like the space shuttle.

I’m not sure of the point of the fact that people don’t want to be identified yet. In any case, the “any time soon” part is acceptable to many people to be part of something cool, and if the payoff is really big and actually foreseeable, then a few years delay is ok.

But we’re not talking about a “few years delay” we’re talking about ten years. Most venture capitalists expect to see a pay-off in considerably less time than that. As for the reason I mention that some of the investors don’t want to be linked with space exploration, I find it rather telling that someone like Paul Allen (you know, one of the founders of Microsoft) doesn’t want people to know he’s giving Rutan (one of the most successful aircraft designers since Clarence L. “Kelly” Johnson) money. Obviously, he’s concerned about his credibility in other areas if it becomes confirmed that he’s the one doing this. If it works, he’ll be hailed as a visionary, if it fails, he’ll be called a nutjob. In the meantime, folks are questioning what he’s thinking.

So then, it’s only outrageously expensive, not appallingly expensive?

Actually, operating a Lunar base is like converting to solar power. All your costs are in the front end of the operation, not spread out a number of years, like it is with conventional energy sources. So while, yes, it would be expensive to set up (though the costs would go down over the course of the launches as economies of scale took over), the cost of running the operation would be extremely cheap when compared to the start up costs.

So the political reason you can think of is to rain metoerites down on your enemies? Well, I guess anything’s worth the cost if you hate someone enough.

It’s not simply that you can rain rocks down on the “bad guys” (though you can cause as much damage as a nuke, without any of that annoying radioactive fallout stuff). You also have an observation platform which is difficult for the “bad guys” to take out. During the Cold War there was the worry that the Soviets were developing anti-satellite weapons which would be able to take out US spy sats. A Lunar base used for spying wouldn’t be nearly as vulnerable to attack, and even if it were attacked, you’ve got humans there who can try to repair things quickly. You don’t have to find a rocket, slap a bird on it (assuming you’ve got one at the ready), fuel it up, launch it, hope it gets to the right orbit, and so on. The best one could hope for putting another bird up is a month or longer, that might not be the case with a Lunar base repairing damage done to it’s gear.

Is there some effect that outweighs the loss of muscle mass as they lose resistance?

Well, NASA’s done some research on that, but we won’t know the truth, of course, until we start sending humans up for long periods of time. And if they’re willing to spend the rest of their lives in space, they may not need that lost muscle tissue.

Yeah, well, with the stuff going on around here, I’m just not inspired. We’re supposed to take money, time, and brainpower from solving things on earth and devote them on the enormous scale necessary for a moon colony?

What, exactly, have we “solved” here on Earth? War? Hunger? Disease? Ignorance? We’ve been hammering away at those problems since the proverbial Dawn of Time™ and haven’t managed to find solutions to them as of yet. What makes you think that throwing a paltry $15 billion more a year at them is going to change that?

I just don’t care enough.

Pity that. The space program has benefited humanity through it’s various developments. Perhaps not as much as people would like, but nonetheless, the effect of the space program touches everybody’s life on a daily basis, whether they know it or not.

And the parallels between this and the sailing explorers are very small.

A better comparison, perhaps, would be between the development of the railroads and space. The steam automobile was invented well before Benz and Daimler built their first car. However, laws were passed in England prohibiting the operation of steam powered vehicles on public roadways, so the technology languished for awhile. Until some bright chap hit upon the idea of buying up land and making his own roads for the steamers to run on! Even then, there were plenty of people who scoffed at the idea, they saw “no need for people to go 25 MPH,” but gradually, over time, railroads developed and grew to the point where most nations on Earth would have a difficult time without them. Already, we’re at the point where we’d be royally screwed if we lost the ability to go into space. Too much of our communication is routed through sats for us to ever turn back, much less the loss of vital weather information. The railroads, too, had to work out methods of supplying themselves on their journey. The engines needed fuel and water, the crews needed food. Eventually, they managed to figure it out. Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin has proposed the Spaceport as a solution to the problem. Essentially, it’s a spaceship which is locked into permanent orbit between the Earth and the Moon. One simply hitches a ride on it to get from either the Earth or the Moon to the other. The only fuel involved is in getting up to the Spaceport and then down to your destination. Because of orbital mechanics, once the Spaceport’s placed in orbit around the Earth and Moon, it’ll continue in that orbit almost indefinately, with almost no fuel needed to maintain the orbit.

I’m not against it in principle, just at the current costs, and with only vague “what ifs” as payoffs.

Until folks start throwing lots of money at this it’s not going to get any cheaper. And we’re not going to find any payoffs (whatever form they might take) until that’s done as well.

[Tuckerfan]

*Originally posted by ltfire *
**Here’s a point to ponder, for what it’s worth to the topic. If any country went full tilt on colonizing any planet, who the hell would go? I’m thinking that by the time it was feasible, anyone living now - wouldn’t be. Are they/we planning on putting up posters looking for people that want a Mars post office box? Why would you leave the great planet Earth to begin with? I’m sure there are a couple or three thousand Luke Skywalker wannabes running around to Star Wars conventions, but what of the rest of us with half a brain?
(not ranting, just wondering)
:o **

According to the folks at The Mars Society, we could have a Martian colony going within about 10 years, if we really put our minds to it. Admittedly, they’re a bit biased, but I don’t think that their timeframe is wildly inaccurate. Most of the technology necessary already exists, and what doesn’t exist isn’t so “bleeding edge” that it would have a long development time.

If someone was holding a gun to our head, I imagine we could get things rolling in considerably less time.

As for why I want to go, I think Sir Edmund Hillary said it best

Because it’s there.

[Cardinal]

Well, with “Because it’s there” being an argument actually offered, we come perhaps to the crux of the conflict. That doesn’t hold much water with me. There are many things that “are there”, and spending the money, time, and lost opportunities to put people onto Mars or a colony on the Moon is just way over the top to me. I’ll get back with more specifc replies later.

[eburacum45]

The Moon is good as a jumping off point, to kick start the exploitation of the solar system, but it is deficient in water so couldn’t support a large population unless you import water from the moons of Jupiter or elsewhere.
This is why the Moon needs to be converted in the first instance to a solar power collector and a producer of solar collection satellite arrays-
(and a fission power generator if there is any uranium up there).

Aldrin is right, of course, there are cheap ways of getting around the solar system, if you are patient.
http://pr.caltech.edu/periodicals/EandS/articles/LXV4/exit.html
set up a system of cyclers between the Earth-Moon system and the volatile rich bodies around the gas giants- water could be imported to the Moon, and eventually Mars;
in a thousand years both worlds could have large areas of habitable real estate.

but the first thing needed is energy. Lots of it. And that can bset come from the Sun, and be captured by the Moon’s silicon.

---

SF worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html

[Tuckerfan]

*Originally posted by Cardinal *
**Well, with “Because it’s there” being an argument actually offered, we come perhaps to the crux of the conflict. That doesn’t hold much water with me. There are many things that “are there”, and spending the money, time, and lost opportunities to put people onto Mars or a colony on the Moon is just way over the top to me. I’ll get back with more specifc replies later. **

Cardinal, I don’t expect a “because it’s there” argument to convince people. It’s my reason for wanting to go. People use the same argument as to why they climb mountains or go deep sea diving, because it explains (as best possible) the deep seated yearning they feel to do these things. And society can benefits from those things as well.

Of course, space exploration isn’t cheap, but look at it this way: The US is currently spending $1 billion a week to rebuild Iraq, and it’s estimated that it’s going to take two years to get Iraq to the quality of life it had just prior to the invasion. If the US continues to dump $1 billion a week into Iraq for those two years, it’ll mean that we’ve spent more on Iraq than the Apollo program cost, and while the benefits to the Iraqi people of being freed from Saddam are probably better than the benefits they’ve gained from the Apollo program, the Apollo program benefitted everyone, not just the US.

[HPL]

*Originally posted by ltfire *
**Here’s a point to ponder, for what it’s worth to the topic. If any country went full tilt on colonizing any planet, who the hell would go? I’m thinking that by the time it was feasible, anyone living now - wouldn’t be. Are they/we planning on putting up posters looking for people that want a Mars post office box? Why would you leave the great planet Earth to begin with? I’m sure there are a couple or three thousand Luke Skywalker wannabes running around to Star Wars conventions, but what of the rest of us with half a brain?
(not ranting, just wondering)
:o **

I’ve never been to a star wars(or a star trek, for that matter) convention, but I’d sign up. I think it would be really kewl to be able to explore another planet firsthand(even if it is only on my time off).

[HPL]

I can think of a good reason to colonize other worlds. Simply, it would be good for the survival of the Human race if we can develop self-succient offworld colonies as soon as possible. Even if somebody presses the button and Human civilization on earth goes up in a nuclear flame, or an astroid hits earth and renders it uninhabiltable, you have at least one other bastain of human life who can survive independent of earth.

Not having all your eggs in one basket would be an excellant reason, if nothing else.