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?
Resources that are minimally available on Earth.
Example: The moon has Helium-3 and is close (in comparison to other celestial bodies).
Is it economically viable? Is it ethical? Ehhhhhhhh. I would say no, but Elon “Head Up His Own Ass” Musk would disagree.
Realistically, the Moon would likely carry a mix of science, mining, and power installations.
Science - You can set up a large telescope on the far side of the Moon which won’t have an atmosphere to compete with. There are some concepts which would use existing craters to keep the cost low.
Mining - It is possible for there to be rare earth minerals on the Moon. There is also Helium-3 in the regolith. A country may choose to have a colony on the Moon address terrestrial shortages.
Power - The Moon makes an excellent site to collect solar power. That power could possibly be beamed/reflected to Earth, used to refine high electrical demand materials, or be a site for compute.
As this gets built out, the Moon will likely become a manufacturing hub, especially for missions beyond the Earth-Moon gravity well due to lower launch costs.
I’d love to hear about radio telescopes on the far side to research the Universe, but I’m not writing the checks. Or am I – since US govt. taxpayer funds are getting spent in Melon’s yard.
Mars really just ends up being a science prestige project for the country or company funding its missions. I suspect most country based missions would follow the Antarctica model where dual use capabilities are built out “for science” and space infrastructure gets built including an Aldrin Cycle ships.
I suspect someone like Musk or a reasonably powerful organization is going to do back of the napkin math and figures out terra forming goes from sci-fi fantasy to feasible. This will likely come around as asteroid miners can get to the Oort Cloud and get access to large amounts of frozen water, methane, and carbon dioxide. As Mars is terra formed, the planet gains value and interest from countries and organizations to create their own colony on the planet.
Find the Ghosts Of Mars.
SCIENCE
I guess we could grow a bunch of wheat inside of it, then send it back to earth. If we’re not treated well we could swap wheat for rocks. At least, that what Heinlein suggested.
Science doesn’t really happen if we continually ask “Why do this?” Science happens when we ask “Why not do this?”
If we want to be a galactic civilization, we must first learn to live on worlds otherwise uninhabitable. The engineering challenges we must overcome to make that happen will give us the knowledge and experience we need to make it possible to expand past our solar system. This is a very long term advancent, and what we do today is what our offspring will do with ease.
Other than political roadblocks, the final roadblock to galactic expansion is FTL travel. We have theories on how to make it possible, but we are limited to the engineering and knowledge of our time now. Far future generations will be the ones to discover if and how to make it possible, but they need the foundational knowledge and experience of how to live in space.
Don’t worry. We’re making Earth pretty uninhabitable these days. We’ll get there without ever leaving the planet.
Unfortunately also true, and more likely than the Star Trek optimism answer.
The Bell Riots?
It’d be cool as fuck.
children, you have to be pernamently there to raise them
In reality there isn’t any real reason to have a permanent base on either… especially Mars.
Rocket fuel. The moon is like the local gas station you stop at to top off the tank and get snacks before you hit the open road.
The Moon is basically devoid of rocket fuel or its ingredients so it will need to be brought there.Edit: wrong The question is, what kind of craft are you going to send and where to warrant Moon refueling as opposed to just another multi-stage rocket?Even then, the tank can be designed for unmanned operation.
The moon has lots of water, and oxygen, which is all you need. Almost rocks on over the ice that’s your fuel. Sure you could get all that on earth but then you have to haul all of that weight out of a gravity well, much easier to simply fuel a ship up with the limited amount of fuel it needs to get to the moon and then have its stock up somewhere with less oppressive gravity.
The question is, what kind of craft are you going to send and where to warrant Moon refueling as opposed to just another multi-stage rocket?
Literally anywhere in the solar system. Refueling on the moon is an enormous efficiency bonus, far apart from anything else not having a huge booster section massively decreased costs. In the long term you would probably build spacecraft on the moon and leave them in orbit of Earth and just have space shuttles handle the landing and taking off part. You could build enormous spacecraft with gravitational centrifugees since you no longer have to worry about landing mass or aerodynamics.
Are you joking?
Edit. Educate yourself. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/moon-water-ice-rocket-fuel
Pro tip: Not making the person feel like an idiot goes a long way into making your information reach more places.
I searched for some terms and you get your usual articles of “greatest energy source found” mixed in with plenty of slop. Its hard to take any of those at face value nowadays when news outlets tend to exaggerate everything science related. Not even mentioning the article you posted has a pay or login wall.
On the moon, I am guessing some sort of railgun facility. Designate a specific spot on Earth, and you can launch mineral packets to crash there for terrestrial harvesting. Mind, I can see horrific consequences if something goes wrong.
In an old game called Stars!, I used to prepare worlds via mineral deposits to serve as industrial centers. The process also conveniently cleared out the previous inhabitants.
Any time anyone ever mentions extra-terrestrial rail guns, I immediately think of this NPC exchange in ME2:
Google: Tescreal, Freedom Citys, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos etc. Basically there are several projects where they try to do unregulated research. Main idea seems to be to “survive” the end of our civilisation by living in Space or in the deep sea, enhance themselves (eg neuralink) , create General Artificial intelligence etc. Thiels Palantir is thought as defense mechanism by surveilling everyone. It all sounds like a big conspiracy theory, unfortunately it is not. Musk being responsible for Dodge, deregulating the US Governement was exactly one of these things. It was never about saving money. This is all a big rabit hole and you will get in a very bad mood readinfg about it.
It takes a few eggs out of our current basket and puts it into other nearby baskets, so as to avoid complete species failure if our original basket falls or gets dropped.
Not the most ideal solution, as we should really step out of our stellar neighbourhood to achieve lasting civilizational redundancy, but it’s far better than not taking any eggs out of the current basket at all.
Plus, incremental efforts in achieving civilizational redundancy always have better results than great leaps, both in terms of consistency as well as resiliency. Figuring things out a bit at a time is nearly always more effective than trying to solve everything all at once.
