Why NASA Is Going Back to the Moon
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
1) because neither a woman nor a minority has landed on the Moon, so to do that
2) to possibly build a refueling station there or in Moon's orbit for space exploration beyond the Moon
3) to train astronauts for increasingly complex missions in deep space
4) to develop science and technology necessary to send humans to Mars
5) to study the origin and evolution of solar system planets
6) to better understand water and ices on the Moon and how to get to it for human use
7) to compete with the Chinese lunar program
"Because certain senators wanted the SLS pork and they had to have a mission for it and Mars was too complex"
And then after the moon was decided on they made the other points up as justification. I don't think NASA was really bothered with going back to the moon.
I mean seriously..
1) Humanity has been to the moon, that's the most important thing. What genitals or colour they had doesn't matter for science. They can be the first on the next small step for a woman. Like Mars. Which would be even better than having to not so boldly go where men have already gone before.
2) This isn't even a real plan yet. Something you may or may not do in the future is now a reason to spend tens to hundreds of billions? And why the moon? Other locations make more sense from an orbital mechanics point of view.
3&4) You don't need the moon for this. You can do them there, sure, but it's not a reason to go there in the first place.
5) Really what clues are there left on the moon? It's the most well understood.
6) The moon obviously has a much lower gravity well but really mining water there is going to be so costly that it is much easier to just bring it from earth until robotics improve. And then we don't need humans there anyway.
7) Ok back to the cold war are we? It was kinda a pissing contest the first time around (the 'conquest' of space didn't really net the US anything which is why the moon was abandoned so quickly). But ok, this seems at least a half decent reason in terms of the current geopolitical situation. Mars would be a much better goal though.
If fusion ever takes off then the He3 thing is another decent reason which I'm pretty sure it's why the Chinese are so interested. I'm surprised to not seeing it mentioned.
I'm not against exploration but I think we should be going to Mars and other places that are not yet explored by humans. And have much more to offer in terms of science. Doing the moon over again is just a distraction IMO. And pork of course. A lot of pork.
Though the recent discovery that some pits on the Moon have constant and stable 63° temperatures is sort of mind-blowing. If permanent habitats could be constructed there, then I see a profitable incentive to do so: $500M weekends for the uber rich. There are 2755 billionaires. If they all take a Moon vacation, that'd generate $1.3775 Quadrillion. Makes those $3B rockets sound cheap.
Long term, having people living on the moon would actually be surprisingly useful.
Things like the rocket equation and delta v are not something that current day muggles are up to date on of course (like in 1800 people probably couldn't intuit train fares, or people in 1900 probably couldn't intuit air fares).
If you do some "back of the envelope"[1] calculations , there are definitely scenarios/niches where it can become cheaper to manufacture things and ship them all the way to Earth from the low-gravity Moon, as opposed to making them directly on Earth and then be stuck dragging them around from point A to point B at the bottom of Earth's horrendously deep gravity well.
Once some sufficient (fsvo sufficient) foothold is established, I think it might then become viable to expand it.
[1] https://xkcd.com/1244/ O:-)