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Comment by ghostcluster | Hacker News Reader

My great hope in these cold war-esque times of tension between China, Russia, and the US is that the field of battle becomes competition in Great Achievements for science, engineering, and space exploration.

Permanent human-staffed moonbases are a good goal to strive towards.

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Agreed on the hope that the new cold war spurs more scientific achievements (just hopefully fewer Manhattan Projects).

However, I don't grok the point of human-staffed moonbases. I'm just a casual layman, but asteroid mining's the only thing I know of with a clear ROI in space. Or is the idea a moonbase would be like the ISS/Antarctica, an international scientific outpost?

Staffing humans on the moon requires efficiencies and innovation in rocket launches, landing, inhospitable settlement, and transport of goods and people between the Earth's surface and the moon.

It is a good stepping stone towards further exploration farther out.

> but asteroid mining's the only thing I know of with a clear ROI in space

I dont think asteroid mining at current transportation costs is a clear ROI - the same amount of resources could be used to mine the earth for a lot more.

I see ROI in micro-gravity manufacturing - stuff that is impossible to do in gravity could be the future! Things like nano particles that would not be possible to create under earth gravity, fine structures that could collapse easily could be sustained in space for example.

Also, a 2nd human habitat (moon or otherwise) as a backup isn't a bad idea, even if it doesn't generate an economic return for a while. We are one asteroid impact away from extinction!

I’m not an expert in any of the following, but a couple reasons might be: 1) Living on multiple bodies would do wonders for the imagination and further space exploration. 2) reduced gravity launches for spacecraft to places other than earth 3) a test environment for developing technologies in a completely different space. The ISS serves this somewhat, but it seems like the scalability is very limited, especially manufacturing.

The gold rush of the moon is helium-3. It's supposed to be a clean and efficient form of energy. I expect it will be critical for expansion.

Before Helium-3 has any value you first need reactors to fuse it. We're not investing a lot into building those, and right now it looks a lot like renewables+storage will be cheaper.

I know what you mean, and I think the parent comment suggests that getting to the moon will empower enterprise and government to seriously consider further investment in those types of reactors. It is just one step to make it possible.

With the progress we are seeing in launching modules and supplies to space I think the calculus on what is cheapest might change (though I am all for investing heavily into renewables and improved storage as soon as possible)

This is a chicken-and-egg situation.

Without Helium-3 available, you do not have any incentive to sink money into reactor R&D.

A lot of the R&D also applies to fusion reactors with more mundane fuels.

That's a fantasy:

https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2834/1

The sooner we can permanently keep even a couple eggs outside our single basket, the better.

We're currently 1 real plague or 1 big asteroid away from ending our species. Up to now we've been very lucky.

I'd like to see in my lifetime our species able to live outside Earth in a self-sustaining way, with enough resources, infrastructure and know-how to make microchips, edit DNA, etc without calling upon Earth to do it.

That'll require tens of thousands of major innovations, not least of which will be the ability to survive lots more radiation than humans normally get exposed to, plus concerns like how space squishes eyeballs and ruins a person's vision.

If humans end up living on luna or somewhere between here and luna, they'll either be augmented with tech we haven't thought of yet or with DNA we haven't invented yet.

I'm excited to see us try, and I don't care which 21st century nation-state makes it happen.

Why do some people place such importance on humans continuing beyond Earth? Is it not just the ultimate hubris to think that we know that doing so is even a good idea?

Aside from some major religions mandating the expansion of humanity (or at least their faithful) - which I suppose could be hubris in the religion - why is it excessively prideful to want our species to continue to exist? What moral framework accounts for a desire to continue our existence in the negative column?

Humans seem to be real, real self preserving fkers.

I know a 70 year old in the US who, after the 2020 election, made a survival plan for living in Australia because the world was going to crumble.

All the while I'm thinking... at 70...why...

I barely understand a young person doing it, but definitely don't understand such planning for like 5 extra years of end life.

We are descendants of people who had strong survival instincts. No surprise here.

An intelligent species consisting of individuals who do not value their continual existence would disappear fairly soon.

There are a lot of things that we as a species have gotten wrong and are not worth preserving.

There are a lot of things that we as a species have gotten right and are worth preserving.

In the words of Prof. Brian Cox, it would be a tragedy if Earth is the only place in the galaxy where consciousness exists, and it would be wiped out by an asteroid.

Why not? Seriously, why wouldn't we try to preserve and upgrade our species for as long as physically possible?

Would we complain if whales said "we don't want our species to end"? Or ants, for that matter?

"No whales, it's the ultimate hubris that you think you have a right to exist and continue existing."

Why is it hubris for humans, like all other species on Earth, to want to exist, propagate, and, since we're intelligent, learn and grow our intelligence, and spread it beyond home base?

Moon's gravity is much weaker than ours, which makes it an attractive starting point for missions to the rest of the solar system.

Launching anything from Earth's surface costs a lot of fuel. In case of Falcon 9, max payload is about 5 per cent of the total weight of the stack on ramp.

If I had to guess, I would guess that the space industry is going to move away from the Earth before, say, 2070. Among other advantages, energy in space is dirt cheap. You get the full solar constant when not in shade, no clouds, no rain, no wind or hail to damage your solar panels etc.

Super-short term, or longer term?

Moon has a similar crust to earth, has never been mined before in all of human history, and doesn't have an ecology to ruin.

But the kicker is that the Delta-V requirements for moon->earth transport are quite modest; even to begin with. [1]

Delta-V requirements scale exponentially with gravity. With the inverse, at 1/6 of earth's gravity and effectively no atmosphere, all kinds of exotic transport and launch solutions that would be ludicrous on earth would be rather pedestrian on the moon. So the theoretical lowest possible price for shipping moon->earth would be very low indeed.

Assume there's mining/manufacturing on the moon already. Then at some point as people build out infrastructure, there's going to be a threshold point. First one factory might start to be able to build things and ship them to some of the more remote places on earth for cheaper than a similar factory on earth can do. At that point demand would increase and the price would keep dropping as volume increased.

Said factory just needs to be very careful to set things up so that at no point in time (past commissioning at least) they need to ship so much as a paper-clip from Earth, because that would immediately crater their budget. [2]

So long term moon-earth ROI is pretty good I'd say. Just getting to that particular threshold would be hideously expensive, since it requires a lot of earth launches. Possibly some intermediate steps might be needed.

[1] To slightly misrepresent the situation but give an intuition: The Saturn V rocket was needed to get to the moon; but the tiny spaceship-stack at the top of the rocket [LM ascent stage + CM/CSM] was sufficient to get back.

[2] Which is not to say that you can't sometimes ship things from Earth. While shipping from Earth is (comparatively) insanely expensive, one-off costs can always be amortized. But you can't practically include earth-launch as an integral part of your on-moon production or shipping processes and still expect to make a profit. This is part of the challenge.

Scientific outpost at first, sure.

But moon poles are eventually very valuable near earth real estate for storing vast amounts of volatiles and manufacturing. Not only craters, it can be extended by building a circumpolar wall that can also support uninterrupted solar energy. The permanent shade inside will provide cryogenic environment for free.

And just like a cold war, China is making a strategic move.

The lunar south pole seems to be prime real estate. One of two always lit / always dark positions, and it has more water ice and craters than the north pole. Definitely the better of the two spots.

Unless they're willing to share, they're shafting the rest of the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_south_pole

Source on them making a "strategic move"?

I see that they completed a landing a couple years ago, but India made the same attempt.

Nothing we do on the moon in the near term will require that it be to the exclusion of other countries. Landing a rover, or creating a moon base of a few hundred square meters still leaves a lot more moon for others.

Nothing except human nature ... see the current controversies in the South China Sea.

States are very territorial. There are emotional reasons for it, but also the exclusive claim for natural resources.

If water is found in mineable concentrations in only a few spots of the Moon, I bet there will be a serious conflict over those spots. It is literally a matter of survival for the future colonists.

I had recently read the coverage on Slashdot [1], which makes mention of territorial claims. China and Russia oppose the US' claims.

[1] https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/01/01/042219/china-spe...

It'll be useful leverage to get 7 south pole claimants, and 8 arctic states to share land / transit rights.

Interesting to speculate if moon claims will intermingle with that on earth.

Did you live during the Cold War? I struggle to understand why someone would want to live under that constant existential threat of nuclear annihilation.

He didn't say he wants it. I think he means that times of renewed rivalry and tension are coming whether we want it or not, and he hopes some good can come from it.

I don't think he's saying "I hope a cold war brews so we can get better space exploration!!"

I think he's saying-- well, at least if geopolitical tensions get worse, maybe it will also at least improve space exploration.

My father worked on Safeguard. It's unfortunate to think that the last several decades of relative calm might have been temporary.

Both Russia and the US still have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out much of humanity. All that changed is that we don't live under is the constant reminder of that existential threat.

> Did you live during the Cold War? I struggle to understand why someone would want to live under that constant existential threat of nuclear annihilation.

Ummm, we still live under that constant existential threat.

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