Moon Base!

POSTED BY: Calhoun
UPDATED: Thursday, February 19, 2004 05:44
VIEWED: 10570
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CALHOUN

Monday, January 12, 2004 1:04 PM

Hey hey! I just saw in the news - George Bush has given the go ahead for a permanently manned moon base.

Big step in the right direction i'd say.

~Keep Flying~

BROWNCOAT1

Monday, January 12, 2004 1:20 PM

If done correctly, a base on the moon could be a step in the right direction. There are resources on the moon yet to be tapped, and its low gravity makes for a good location from which to launch spacecraft deeper into space.

I wonder though if Bush's plan comes now because the Chinese are talking about having a man on the moon soon, and having a permanent moon base by 2012.

Bush is said to also have his eyes on a base on Mars in the future.

"May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one."

NOOCYTE

Monday, January 12, 2004 3:20 PM

Trouble with the Moon Base idea (apart from its being a cynical election-year ploy to give an illusion of vision, and cash in on a successful Mars landing) is that, in the near-to-mid-term, there really is no way to make a Moon base truly self-sustaining, and thus it will always be a resource hog.

Apart from the possibility of cometary water ice locked in south polar craters, dear old Luna is a dead rock, geologically (Selenologically?) inert. the lack of any significant history of vulcanism over the last several billion years means that mineral ores will be difficult to extract, since they won't be concentrated and differentiated as they would be on a more active body. The amount of energy required to unlock oxygen from its regolith (dirt) and rock would be so intensive as to be prohibitive for quite some time. Thus we lose the benefit of a shallower gravity well, since everything will have to be hauled up from the bottom of ours. Also, with a 28-day circadian cycle, plants won't grow without artificial light (more energy). The complete lack of an atmosphere means no radiation protection (so look out for solar flares!), and absolutely no protection from meteoroids (a grain of sand can ruin your whole day!).

Mars, by contrast, has an atmosphere (not much of one, mind you, but enough for our purposes). This gives us some radiation shielding (still have to pile sand bags on the roof of the Hab and such, though), protection from the smaller meteoroids, and a source of oxygen (~99% CO2, easily cracked). Also, you can make methane rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere and a little bit of hydrogen (which can be obtained from what appears to be an ocean of water in the form of pure ice at the poles and permafrost just about everywhere else), using tech which dates back to the 19th century.

In addition to the atmosphere, Mars has a gee field a good third higher than the moon's, so the effects of low-grav on the human body will be even lower. It also has a 24-hour day-night cycle, so plants could grow normally in a simple greenhouse. Mars' axial tilt provides seasonal variations in sunlight (albeit around double the length of the Earth's). Mars also has a much more recent history of significant vulcanism, which increases the chances of obtainable minerals in handy veins.

In short, Mars has everything one would need to set up a self-sustaining colony, whose inhabitants could live off the land to a MUCH greater degree than they could on the Moon. This presents the very real possibility of a truly independent branch of human civilization (one wonders if this is one of the sources of resistance from governments whose hegemony would be, for the first time in this century, limited by real barriers of time and distance [sound familiar?]). A lunar base would forever be a colony, where a Mars outpost stands the real chance of becoming a sovereign, independent civilization, a test bed for true novelty (which is becoming all-but impossible on this planet, with its increasingly solipsistic preoccupation with legalistic minutiae)

In essense, we do NOT need to go to the Moon to "prepare" us for Mars. It would, at best, be an expensive and unneccesary detour. At worst, it would become another pork-barrell-padding white elephant like the ISS, miring the project of human exploration and the establishment of a truly 2-planet human species in another endless bog.

We are more prepared to go to Mars today than we were to go to the Moon in 1961...and approximately as ready as we are to go to the Moon today. Given that, I would opt for the project with the brightest future! A lunar jaunt would still be possible with spin-off tech from a Mars mission, mind you, so we needn't abandon the obvious scientific appeal of a lunar base (a Darkside observatory, for instance, in a nice radio shadow). But to go at it the other way around would be a needless waste of momentum.

If anyone is interested in following up on these themes, I HEARTILY recommend the book, The Case For Mars by Robert Zubrin. While I'm at it, you might also want

NOOCYTE

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 12:48 AM

Pardon the bumpage, but I had another thought.

Mars shows strong signs of once having had lots of liquid water and a climate suitable for the emergence of life. Then something happened. Understanding what went down could help us squeeze some more time out of Earth-That-Is.

The Moon has never possessed such conditions, and so, from a planetological perspective, is FAR less interesting.

Gee, can you tell where I stand on this?!

Keep flyin!

Department of Redundancy Department

SHINY

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:10 AM

Thanks for the very informative overview, Noocyte! Mars it is!!!

RIVER
Purple elephants are flying.
MAL
Good. Thanks for the update.

LADYJAYNE

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:14 AM

Yes, Noocyte, great comments. Thanks for sharing.

--Kala

JASONZZZ

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 1:27 AM

So, while there is no argument that a human mission to Mars to a worthwhile goal. The problem is whether establishing a Moon Base, or simply sending humans to the Moon is anything worthwhile at all.

I think taking the mission to Mars as an Engineering problem on top of being a Scientific endeavor will yield light. Taking the original Moon shots as an example, there were a tremendous number of Engineering type problems that needed to be solved: how to get people in space, how to sustain life in space for several weeks at a time, how to deliver a manned spacecraft into moon's orbit, how to get them onto the moon and then back up and all the way back to earth again, then how to get them safely from earth orbit back to terra firma. All of these problems and hundreds more needed to be solved one at a time over dozens of separate missions in orbit and roundtrips to the Moon before an actual Moon landing could happen.

The same could have been said about all of these extraneous missions simply into orbit... "what did they actually yield?", "The mission isn't into earth's orbit, the mission is to the Moon!" Just like the original moon shot, there are many many many more Engineering problems that needs to be conquered before we can have humans journey 6 months one way to a planet where the nearest help is by radio relay 40 minutes away.

Even the Mars Society's own webpage's content point to advocating a few practice Moon Shots before the actual Mars Mission:

http://www.marssociety.org/opcongress

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TEELABROWN

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 2:11 AM

Don't know about you, but if I can't get to Mars, the Moon is fine with me. Either way, it's OFF THIS ROCK!!!

Anyway, Keep flyin'!

............................................................................................
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Keep flyin', and remember, THEY can't take the sky from US!

ZAPHODB

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 2:39 AM

I'm cool with it as long as they don't named the base "Alpha"....

Industrial Looniee & Madness - http://www3.telus.net/vchrusch

TEELABROWN

Tuesday, January 13, 2004 2:48 AM

How about "Moon Base Pi: Furthering Mathematical Research."

Very sorry about that. An urge came over me.

............................................................................................
"Freedom is the Freedom to say that 2+2 makes 4. If that is granted, all else follws"-Winston, 1984
Keep flyin', and remember, THEY can't take the sky from US!

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