The news is full of it, excitement seems high, and I really don't get it. I'm not against space-related research, but why suddenly the moon? And why send people there? Can someone fill me in on what's to be gained or why one might be excited about it?
Allow me to use the linked article for my questions.
There have been three primary drivers of renewed interest in the Moon. The first was the discovery and confirmation in the 1990s and early 2000s that water ice is likely to exist at the lunar poles in permanently shadowed craters. The presence of abundant water, providing oxygen and hydrogen resources, has given space agencies a new reason to explore the poles.
Yea but so what? Hydrogen is literally the most common thing in the universe, no fucking way there is also some on the moon ๐คฏ. Then what's so spectacular about moon ice, water, or even oxygen? And why does it need people to explore it?
A second factor has been the rise of China's space program, which has sent a series of ambitious robotic missions to the Moon that have both landed on the far side and returned samples from the lunar surface. China has made no secret of its interest in sending astronauts to the Moon, leading to competing efforts between NASA's Artemis Program and China's lunar station goals.
Again why? Is this some repetition of the Cold War Soviet-US competition?
Finally, there has been some interest from private companies in the commercial development of the lunar surface, both to exploit resources there but also for other purposes. This has stimulated investment in private companies to provide transportation to the lunar surface, including ispace, Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Firefly.
Exploiting resources has to be a joke, right? Do they want to sell us the newly found moon water? The only point I get is the tourism aspect. Because, of course, I always encourage billionaires to pursue dangerous hobbies ๐
The moon is a great launching point. And the water (ice) could be converted to fuel for rockets.
Basically with a permanent moon base we could send much bigger payloads, could refuel rockets before sending them out further into the solar system, could set up observatories that wouldn't be affected by the atmosphere, could collect solar energy and send it back to earth via microwaves. Not to mention all the geological science, spelunking, and moon golf we could be doing.
There's all kinds of things we could do.
Imagine the far side of the moon dotted with radio telescopes that make Arecibo look like a digital satellite dish...
To further clarify, one of the big reasons we don't do much in space is because it's really expensive to get stuff up there, even with the reduced costs from reusable rockets. After a certain point it's cheaper to make a base on the moon, build stuff there and launch it to do whatever you wanted to do than it is to do it here and launch it into space. That it would also reduce the impact on the environment at some point is also a plus.
Of course, all of that requires the resources be available on the moon. We already know the moons composition is similar to earth's, but we weren't sure about water. Now that we know water is there, we have everything we need to have lunar industry.
I wonder how much stuff we need to deposit on the surface to start fucking with the orbit and create yet another global disaster.
Hate to disappoint, but it's far more than you could possibly imagine. You could dump the equivalent mass of the entire human civilization, every single person and everything we've ever made, on the Moon and it wouldn't have a noticeable effect.
Not disappointed at all. I was wondering how much and the answer was a whole lot, which is kind of what I was expecting.
Progress in one field often results in progress elsewhere, too. Apart from that, people working on projects on the moon would probably do the same work here, just under less good circumstances. It really is not a question of "throw enough money/personnel at the problems". What needs to be done on earth is very different from what's going on up there.
The money though. If they are not going to pry the money out of billionaires, it has to come from somewhere (less well off people). Those are arguably better spent to improve situations on the earth than on something that's likely to disproportionately benefit the wealthy as their plaything, extra income, escape or whatever. Especially because it should be clear to everyone except the absolute dumbest and delusional people how critical action is right now.
The USA spends 2.01 Trillion of its 6.1 Trillion USD budged on military annually. That's roughly 1/3 of its cash. If I were to repurpose some money for other purposes, such as fixing the infrastructure, that's probably where I'd start. Now, that's probably an argument everyone has heard so many times, you'll have gotten sick of it 20 years ago, but stricter regulations on taxation for ultrarich people, for example, would bring in more cash, and cracking down more on monopolies would help competition, ie. lead to more employment, and more sensible redistribution of money overall could help the environment, education and health of the people, and we wouldn't have touched space programs yet.
Then there's the argument that every Cent disappearing in private pockets, of which the overwhelming share (4.5 Trillion USD in the USA alone, as much as 2/3 of the country's yearly budget) goes to its 735 billionaires, is money lost to people. There are many ways to get more money, distribute it more productively (as in: better education, healthcare etc) than stuffing the pockets of a handful of people who then spend it on leisure projects. Every 5th or 6th yacht could finance not only one, but at least 10 schools or hospitals, and every 10th mansion would be enough to run homeless programs or battle drug addiction.
The fraction of money spent on space is negligible. It also has a ROI and provides real advances in tech and produces high-value work and income for people (which in turn leads to additional income).
It's really debatable if it's wise to start with space programs when it comes to redistribute money. And that's just the USA. Imagine the whole world came to its senses.
I think you are missing the point. The point isn't where the money is spent the most. The point is money has to come from somewhere. And yes, ideally it would be redirected from billionaires, mega-corps and military budget, but that's currently not happening. The money spent on space exploration is at least somewhere in the same vein as the ones spent on the environment, other researches etc. They are for the sake of making progress. Let's look at a hypothetical situation where space exploration is getting more traction again (more than now).
And that's the problem.
I don't want to run away from our problems. I want to run away from other humans.
I try not to be
Username checks out. And I see what you mean :/
The worst thing about humanity is all the humans
A lot of technology that people now rely on everyday has roots in NASA, take a look at some of the NASA spinoff technologies
These are real ways that NASA technology is helping earth now.
Remember that the core of space exploration involves keeping people alive. Basically everything NASA does has applications for people here on earth and those technologies and advancements do come back around to us.
Scientific advancement isn't a straight line, it takes steps forward and backwards and long circuitous loops around. Think of how many headlines you've seen about "scientists working on X accidentally discover Y" those scientists may not always pursue Y further at that time but that opens the door for other scientists to pick it up and keep moving forward.
We are made out of the same basic stuff as the moon, as Mars, Venus, Jupiter, the sun, everything in the universe is made of the same stuff and plays by the same rules. Understanding what's happening elsewhere in space helps us to better understand what's happening here on Earth and how to fix our problems.
Also imagine trying to tackle things like climate change without the ability to monitor and measure the causes from satelites.
And NASA creates billions of dollars of economic output and creates hundreds of thousands of jobs, rockets and laboratories don't build and maintain themselves, so we're not just throwing money into a hole. There are a lot of people that are directly dependent on NASA for their livelihood.
And whether we like it or not, someday we will no longer be able to live on earth, whether by our own doing, because the sun burns out in 5 billion years, an asteroid impact, a gama ray burst, etc. The universe is a hostile place and we're living in a fragile little bubble. We hopefully won't have to worry about that for a long, long time, but we don't truly know how long our little blue paradise will last, and we need to have backup plans before then. It's time to start planting trees under whose shade we will never sit.
It sounds like the suggestion you want to make is to go back to our pre-industrial state. Is that actually what you're suggesting?
Link? The only comment of yours that I can see that mentions planned obsolescence is the one I replied to.
Thank you, that comment must not have synced to my instance or something.
That aside though, I don't think you realize how incredibly difficult it would be to outlaw planned obsolescence, or to shift a large chunk of the population to riding bicycles. In the US, one would require changing laws that currently benefit both politicians and business owners, the other would require mass infrastructure rework the likes of which hasn't been seen since FDR's New Deal.
What does any of that have to do with space exploration though?
So what's your plan? How do you propose to solve all of our many problems?
Because if you don't have one, you're just complaining to hear yourself complain. And if you do have one, fucking do something to bring it to fruition besides being a contrarian asshole on a lesser-used internet forum.
Same attitude as not helping the needy from other countries because we have needy of our own here. Using money for one thing does not mean less money for another, equal, thing. Unlearn this.
If we launch rockets from the moon we might push the moon back and it will crash into earth
This cracked me up, thank you
The moon is actually slowly moving away from earth.
I don't blame it