Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
Staging area for interplanetary exploration. It takes a lot of energy to leave the earth, making the rest of the journey to Mars or Jupiter quite difficult. It doesn’t take nearly as much energy to launch from the moon though.
Make new rules.
Epstein planet
There are resources on the moon. Like helium which the sources on Earth are slowly depleting because helium that gets released in to the air is basically gone, it floats up to the upper layers of the atmosphere and some atoms will eventually get knocked into space and leave Earth’s gravity. Also some scientific experiments require low gravity. Currently they are doing them on the ISS or in a reduced-gravity aircraft. In a moon base you can do a lot more science with more people.
Also some people that are researching lab grown organs think that in order to grow an entire organ that it has to be done in low gravity. So imagine in the future we could have a moon base that grows organs for thousands of people at a time.
So imagine in the future we could have a moon base that grows organs for thousands of people at a time.
Read: thousands of billionaires at a time
Born to late to explore the world
Born to early for space organs
Why even try
If organs can’t grow in Earth gravity then what the fuck am I
A fleshy fucking marvel, bitch
But without all the helium the earth will fall down.
Wake up, sheeple! The government is trying to bring down the moon!
he extration does nor make sense. He-3 extraction might.
The moon could be like an orbital gas station which is much easier to land and launch from compared to Earth (no atmosphere, less gravity). Building a buffer on the moon would make it considerably easier to ship mass to other planets. I don’t really see a way we build a Mars base without having succeeded on the Moon first.
This just pushes the question out one ring. What do we need to do on other planets that we can’t do on Earth?
The sad answer is there isn’t really anything. Go live on Mars and it will suck compared to Earth - no nature to enjoy, instrument limited variety of food, largely cut off from the rest of human culture and experience. After hundreds of years, it might be developed to look like suburban Ohio - you’ll have some iron mines and some Applebee’s and maybe enough people that the martian memes are fire … but you still won’t have a beach, or anything to see outside, or a blue sky.
It will just be Earth, but worse.
Exon Mobile on the moon. As long as they have some snacks I think it would do well!
fuck
NASA spending has historically created more in return than is spent. It’s somewhat expensive (essentially a rounding error next to military spending though), but the science done gives a good return on investment. This isn’t just like on moon rocks or whatever, but developing technology that the missions need. Things like thermally reflective lightweight fabric, or a ton of other things. The science done on the Moon is worth a lot on its own, but it’s also not the only thing we’re getting out of it.
However, what are billionaires getting out of it? Hopefully it’s just the opportunity to profit from the contracts and not something more nefarious. We all know it is though eventually.
That’s just funding research with extra steps.
Science on the aggregate gives excellent return on investment. Unfortunately politicians want an extravagant excuse for funding it, but it would be much more efficient not to do the gimmicks, just do the science and not allow public sentiment to dictate what’s viable.
it would be much more efficient not to do the gimmicks, just do the science and not allow public sentiment to dictate what’s viable.
Probably, but sometimes having to meet real world challenges leads you down pathways that wouldn’t otherwise have been considered.
“The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.” - Robert A. Heinlein
Brb finding something preposterous from Starship Troopers
We must terraform Mars and live like kings!
How about you start by terraforming the Sahara desert or shut the fuck up, Elon.
While I would very much like to save the environment on Earth, people are not going to stop consuming the planet’s resources and allow that to happen. Equally as important, we don’t know how to save our environment. Do you know how to terraform the Sahara? I don’t. In fact, there are dozens of scientists with dozens of different ideas of things we can try that could help mitigate global warming and help restore natural environments. But doing so would amount to performing experiments on the Earth’s biosphere and we only have one biosphere to work with. If the experiments goes wrong, which any researcher can tell you is very likely, then we could do even more damage and maybe have no biosphere left at all.
A better plan is to go someplace like Mars and experiment there. Learn how to create and manipulate a biosphere someplace where a failed experiment won’t potentially wreck the biosphere we need live in.
Edit to add: Do you really want to let the Elon Musks of the world spread reflective dust in the ionosphere, or launch a giant sun-shade into orbit to block some of the sun’s light from hitting the planet? Wouldn’t it be better to do the experiments somewhere else?
Equally as important, we don’t know how to save our environment.
Absolutely bizzarre logic.
We definitely know how to DESTROY the environment, and we can’t even stop doing that.
If you having trouble finding a comfortable sitting position, it could because the shoulder of an Exxon marketing executive is constantly in the way.
For the most part, the resources that we need to survive are renewable if we use them responsibly. And the things that aren’t renewable we can be quite economical about using and should last centuries if not millennia into the future, when hopefully we have better technology to give us alternatives.
We do not need to terraform the Sahara to save Earth. The point is that if you’re so gung-ho about terraforming things, how about you start with a smaller challenge that’s closer to supply lines and labor?
Going to Mars is just a bad plan, period. There’s nothing on Mars for us. Going to the Moon, fine, the low gravity and the Helium-3 and the short distance I can definitely see an argument being made for it. But Mars? There’s no reason whatsoever to go there.
Apparently if you terraform the Sahara, it’s bye-bye rainforest in South America. The Amazon rainforest needs the dust that lands over there from the Sahara.
Bye-bye is probably a bit of an overstatement. Yes plants need phosphorous, and some more than others, but I don’t think the Amazon would disappear without the phosphorous influx from the Sahara. Change - sure, probably - but there’s still plenty of nutrients and water for vast forests to continue existing there.
The best way I can say it is it’s kind of like exercise. Going to the Moon makes about as much sense as " pick up heavy object, put down heavy object." The Moon itself doesn’t really accomplish a lot in the moment, but the practice of engineering all the little things that it takes to get to the Moon, and learning about the universe along the way, is kind of like exercise for society coming together to solve hard problems.
Now you’re correct that there’s a lot of hard problems right here on earth for us to try and solve, and that’s valid. But I also need you to think about just how little funding actually goes to NASA. Or Space X for that matter. It’s actually a lot less difficult (and expensive) to get to the Moon than say, teach all our children to read properly.
The skills we build and the things we learn along the way however can be turned around and repurposed for lots of other hard problems down the road that are a lot closer to home. It sure as hell beats the other kind of “exercise” we’ve historically done to advance our skills which mainly consists of killing each other by the millions.
Does that make sense?
same thing theyre doing here. exploit the resources til the planet is destroyed
Unlimited supply of moonsugar
It’s a lot cheaper to launch with just the fuel needed to get to the moon, then refuel there and launch again in the much lighter gravity. It’ll make it easier/cheaper/less resource intensive to explore space.
This just pushes the question up a level. Why explore space? All the things we need, all the things we like, all the problems to solve - they are here.
-1. The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3. Earth has almost none and is quickly running out. This is due to the fact that much of those reserves come from the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field deflects that.
-2. It’s fairly easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface, and comparatively easy to launch things to the Moon vs. Directly from Earth to Deep space.
-3a. The moon blocks much of the radio chatter from Earth (on it’s far side) meaning radio telemetry and astronomy have a MUCH easier time doing research
-b. By using such methods in concert with Terrestrial installations/telescopes, it makes for a FINE “natural” interferometer for literal logarithmic fractions of the price over Conventional Lagrange point based systems.
-4. The moon is ideal for biological “life boating” (google the “Svalbard Seed Bank” to get what I’m talking about)
-5. Earth’s gravity can sometimes skew the results of VERY sensitive nuclear particle experiments. A particle collider on the moon might lead to exciting discoveries in quantum physics. Also such colliders require lots of liquid helium for cooling. (see point 1) The moon gets INCREDIBLY cold on it’s night side, which saves on energy costs to boot, and night on the moon lasts for 2 weeks.
-6. The Lunar crusts’ composition is almost identical to Earth’s which means it probably has huge reserves of lithium, gold, platinum, titanium, and palladium. The fact that it gets seeded by meteorites frequently also increases these odds.
What’s up with particle physics? Is there a real possibility that we’ve just gone as far as we can go and are back where the greeks were, having philosophical debates about unfalsifiable theories?
To your point 5, one of the biggest problem in space is cooling heat producing systems. There are 3 ways of heat transfer:
- Conduction - through contact of heat conducting systems like metals.
- Convection - through movement of heat transfer fluids like water or air.
- Radiation - through infrared radiation.
In space there is only radiative method available which is very inefficient. The moon getting cold on the dark side is due to it lacking atmosphere to hold the heat. One of the reason convection method of heat transfer not available.
Particle collider uses liquid helium to keep superconducting magnets on. Also to cool the collider.
Cooling would absolutely not work on moon. Low gravity may give different results of particle experiment and might be helpful.
Cooling would absolutely not work on moon.
Why not? You’ve got the entire moon as a heat sink.
Necessary? No.
I think the immediate concerns are oxygen, radiation and space debris impacts
