US must land astronauts on the Moon again
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I also think this is a great example of cognitive dissonance we tech people display, “oh we’re going to the moon in the name of freedom to stop the Chinese claiming all the resources for themselves. That’s good. I like space travel.”
Reality is, we’re off to do the same thing we’ve always done, fight over control of resources. There’s hope in knowing that throughout its history, there’s one thing the US has done competently.
And no, a lunar base is not a good launching spot to get to other places in the solar system. You’re much better off with large orbital bases for that so you don’t have to waste reaction mass getting to and from the surface of a heavy body without atmosphere.
"How much water is on the Moon?": "...Based on remote observations by radar instruments aboard Chandrayaan-1 and LRO, the lunar poles have over 600 billion kilograms of water ice. That’s enough to fill at least 240,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools..." - https://www.planetary.org/articles/water-on-the-moon-guide
- Puerto Rico
- U.S. Virgin Islands
- Guam
- Northern Mariana Islands
- American Samoa
- Baker Island
- Howland Island
- Jarvis Island
- Johnston Atoll
- Kingman Reef
- Midway Atoll
- Palmyra Atoll
- Wake Island
Once we have developed technologies and experience on the Moon then moving on to Mars becomes more sensible and easier.
The moon is actually a much harder place to have a long term base than Mars. With the moon you either get cooked for ~2 weeks and then freeze for ~2 weeks or you set down at the poles and constantly freeze. The Apollo missions where timed to get out before things got hot. The Mars atmosphere is thin, but provides ready access to nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon plus tiny trace amounts of hydrogen and even some noble gasses. The Moon is just shy of vacuum and would be very difficult to extract significant quantities of anything useful.
So going to the moon first means solving all sorts of problems than don’t help a Mars mission.
But adding to the negatives list there's the razor-like moon dust: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/nasa-s-coating-tec...
Going to the Moon helps learning about and solving many problems that will help on Mars for much cheaper and without incurring months and months of space travel.
Show me people living on the Moon permanently then we can discuss trying that on Mars. Otherwise it is indeed just for the show like the Moon landings.
For comparison, the average surface temperature on Mars is -60 C.
The longest lit places we know of are lit ~94% of the year but then experience even longer periods of deep freeze. They also don’t get much sunlight, and having a base there would create a long shadow. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S00191035100013...
Multi month moon bases could be an intermediary before going to the moon, but those spots still get really cold.
Let probes and automated systems do it.
While that quote is intentionally more poetry than science (it's from Babylon 5) it reflects a kernel of the truth. Right now, we have all of our eggs in one basket. We must act with great care toward that basket, surely. But we should also strive as a species to see that there is more than one basket. Mars is the first baby step toward the stars, and we should go to the stars.
If we can't survive here on Earth, literally the most perfect habitat for us, then what in the world is the point of "going to the stars", whatever that means in the first place? What are we going to do there? Destroy whatever secondary Earth we find? What physics is there to say that we can even get to another solar system before we destroy the habitability of the Earth?
We can "go to the stars" without sending man out first. I still see no current reason to send humans to Mars other than to waste resources.
> Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out.
Yea, and that's a minimum of 400-500 million years out, and it's going to get a lot hotter before it goes cold. And umpteen million other things on Earth, such as the geological structure, will have drastically changed by then. You shouldn't act like humanity actually has the ability to effectively worry about such a date when we can't even do most stuff today with any longer than a year or two horizon. The likelihood of disaster, such as asteroid or meteor impact or a Venus-type situation or other ecosystem collapse scenarios, before the Sun exhausts itself is basically 99.<however many 9s you want>%. Going to Mars doesn't give us anymore data on how to escape the Sun's evolution.
And I highly question any claim that humanity even has the ability to be an interstellar species, which is a separate question from capability.
Who are we? Just a species which won evolutionary lottery in one way or another and dominate a planet with what we do best.
Exploring what's out there is exciting, yes, but if we're going to ruin everywhere like our pale blue dot, I think it's for greater good that we go extinct on this marble.
It isn't. It's a relic of intuitions born in our ancestral environment when exploration tended to be profitable. But that's because our ancestral explorations all took place in the relatively benign environment of earth.
It's barely realistic to do a sample return mission to Mars. Sending humans there is a pipe dream.
Developing, testing, and sending the massive rockets required for human travels to Mars, not to mention the other supporting systems development required over sending only unmanned systems, has "about 0%" affect on climate change? The environmental and ecosystem damage that rockets do is alone incredibly disruptive.
I simply see little reason, aside from ego, to send humans to Mars.
If you want to fix climate change there are much better targets.
My original comment above does not say that rockets should be the top focus on reducing climate change. It says they are a contributor to climate change, which they are. I don't see why we're wanting to send humans to Mars and doing so will thus needlessly increase the impact of rockets on the environment.
Yes, there are worse things than rockets, but the impact is definitely not zero, and more and more rockets are going off, so the impact will only increase. The rockets required for human flight are much, much larger than those for unmanned missions. Further, the negative affect of rockets on the local environment, that is local to the launch sites, is very underrated. As noted in the linked article from the NOAA, the impact of rockets needs more study, and the impact is different than airplanes and is estimated to increase the temperature of the stratosphere by degrees, and not a fraction of degrees. This has downstream effects that are not good and is again different than airplanes.
Lastly, yes, planes are bad, too, and we should absolutely reconsider plane fuel and flight use.
First Google result: https://time.com/6273065/space-travel-climate-impact/ and https://research.noaa.gov/2022/06/21/projected-increase-in-s...
> Indeed, according to the NOAA report, a single passenger aboard a rocket is responsible for 100 times more climate-changing pollution than a passenger aboard an airplane.
> The researchers found that this level of activity would increase annual temperatures in the stratosphere by 0.5 – 2° Celsius or approximately 1-4°Farenheit, which would change global circulation patterns by slowing the subtropical jet streams as much as 3.5%, and weakening the stratospheric overturning circulation.
That's a big deal, because it vastly simplifies orbital infrastructure, which in turn makes it realistic to think of returning materials to Earth or sending them to resupply ships further out.
Want to buy some magic beans? They are theoretically possible...
It doesn't mean all science fiction becomes reality.
Because on Earth there's a real problem: you need carbon nanotubes to do it. And not just, the ones we have, but perfectly formed, seriously long carbon nanotubes (depending on weaving techniques you can get up to 80% UTS, I can't remember if this is enough).
We don't have these. We may never have these. It may be energetically impossible to build and maintain these.
But the moon space elevator doesn't have that problem. A number of existing materials in use today meet the necessary strength/weight requirements for lunar gravity. You can just go and buy them. If you went to the moon with them, you could drop a very long tether from orbit down to the surface and it would work.
The main reason we don't have a space elevator on the moon is the feasibility of moving materials to the moon to build it. But that's a limitation which applies to...all things Moon related. Moving thousands of tons to build a Lunar base or research station has exactly the same problems. It is theoretically possible but logistically infeasible at the moment, but not insurmountable.
That's different - in an important way - from requiring materials which don't currently exist in sufficient quantities, or purity, using manufacturing techniques which don't exist and may never exist.
Around 1,800 space launches (including USSR) vs 1,500 USA. And they seem to be increasing the frequency of launches.
Angara and Soyuz-5 are designed to be reusable to some extent.
If you want to say something is obsolete, you need to be more specific. I'm sure a lot of "1960s design[s]" are state of the art.
It's an easy trap to fall into, but a dangerous one. We've also seen it manifested in the war prognosticating ("they're a bunch of drunks who will run out of missiles soon!"). Well, apparently there are some sober ones.
So is patronising people on the internet, it seems.
I'm going to leave it there.
And sure, there’s plenty to criticize about Russian politics but that doesn’t mean they aren’t a space contender.
Heck, replace Russia with India. India has a ton of basic problems but that is not stopping them from competing.
I mean I'm not sure if this is true.
They until recently sold around 100 RD-180 rockets to the US - none of which experienced issues. Not to mention putting US astronauts into space.
Russia is one of the few nations that actually have the history, engineering talent, finances and the raw resources to compete.
Plus, it's been widely reported that Russian military industrial output is way up with factories working 3 shifts, etc. We are not talking about illiterate Afghanis.
The "spin" is coming from you.
> Space X rockets (and others) blow up all the time
SpaceX has done ~227 successful Falcon missions in a row. Those rockets do NOT "blow up all the time". Further, the success rate of the Falcon 9 is 247/249. Meaning, 99.20%. For the block 5 variant it is 192/192 or 100% success rate.
SpaceX is also developing some rockets. You seem to be comparing rockets which are under development and where SpaceX often gives a low probability of success with missions that are supposed to work. The development rockets are NOT in production, they are NOT used to bring cargo in space. It's really apples vs oranges.
> So not sure why this is being reported so negatively (well, actually, I do, of course...)
Instead of giving some stupid hint just say what you wanted to say. Up to now what you said doesn't make sense to me, so no why not explain the rest as well.
I think it's because Luna-24 nearly 5 decades ago was a success, and reported Soviet success rates of their probe programs were 100% (despite the actual number being lower), alongside some cheekiness due to Russian timeline being chosen to land just before the Indian mission.
I don't think that such a failure of a 50 year old technology with a previous "100%" success rate is that weird for people to have such a take about. I think it is weird that you suggest SpaceX rockets are blowing up all the time, when a much more direct and accurate comparison would be the Japanese/Israeli lander failure.
Do we consider Japan/Israel serious contenders to NASA/ESA in space here? Probably not in the same way as India and China.
That kind of thing just doesn't happen to NASA and ESA very much.
But if we can’t fix the home we have, what reason is there that humanity expand into space? How do we know we won’t f that up too?
Our current home needs our collective imagination and creativity more than the moon, or space.
Once we solve this problem we can move on, but until we do, space exploration is narcissistic manifest destiny escapism at a species wide level.
https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/
>However, I believe, like many of my friends, that travelling to the Moon and eventually to Mars and to other planets is a venture which we should undertake now, and I even believe that this project, in the long run, will contribute more to the solution of these grave problems we are facing here on Earth than many other potential projects of help which are debated and discussed year after year, and which are so extremely slow in yielding tangible results.
>Besides the need for new technologies, there is a continuing great need for new basic knowledge in the sciences if we wish to improve the conditions of human life on Earth. We need more knowledge in physics and chemistry, in biology and physiology, and very particularly in medicine to cope with all these problems which threaten man’s life: hunger, disease, contamination of food and water, pollution of the environment.
>Of all the many wonderful results of the space program so far, this picture may be the most important one. It opened our eyes to the fact that our Earth is a beautiful and most precious island in an unlimited void, and that there is no other place for us to live but the thin surface layer of our planet, bordered by the bleak nothingness of space. Never before did so many people recognize how limited our Earth really is, and how perilous it would be to tamper with its ecological balance. Ever since this picture was first published, voices have become louder and louder warning of the grave problems that confront man in our times: pollution, hunger, poverty, urban living, food production, water control, overpopulation. It is certainly not by accident that we begin to see the tremendous tasks waiting for us at a time when the young space age has provided us the first good look at our own planet.
As a huge lover of space travel, I have shared that very letter from Ernst Stuhlinger. What it really only proves is that if you throw enough money at something, you will get some returns. The rest of the arugment is borderline religious in nature; that through some mysterious process if we just get into space we'll suddenly realize oh, we should fix that planet, simply because we can see ourselves as one small planet.
Peak space travel was arguably right when this letter was written. If it were at all true, we would not in the position we're in now. Instead, the opposite has happened, and it's not because we're not travelling in space - it's because we continue to ignore the problems we alone are causing.
Running away from those problems into space will not somehow, magically, solve them.
This take is strikingly similar to the movie "Don't Look Up":
> And when these treasures from heaven [asteroid fragments] are claimed, poverty as we know it, social injustice, lose of biodiversity, all these multitudes of problems will become relics of the past and humanity will stride through the pillars of Boaz and Jachin, naked into the glory of a golden age
which... is a satire.
We need to stop (over) polluting the environment, not to find better ways to clean the environment.
Finding better ways to clean the environment will only lead humanity to pollute more. Ernst Stuhlinger obviously never took a stroll nearby a chemical plant.
We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level.
You get 100 people all taking craps and pissing in one area, that causes huge problems for the local area. Also breeds disease.
Your solution in this case would be what? Because you say not to find a way to clean, just stop over polluting.
What you and the writer's of "Don't Look Up" don't seem to get is that, by pressing humanity into space and solving challenging problems we get new tools to deal with existing problems. Not that "All the problems will cease to exist once we do the thing."
You get a new tool, how you use that tool is up to you and those around you.
In 1920, someone developed a pesticide that was great for killing louse, fumigating ships and warehouses. This was great and saved many people. Then in 1942, someone decided to use it to systematically murder a race of people.
This does not mean that we should never make or use pesticides again, it means that we need to bring people closer together and get them to stop trying to kill each other over slight differences.
You haven't read the text attentively. "Visiting a chemical plant" is different from "taking a stroll nearby" it, that is, seeing the effects of it in the environment.
> We pollute the environment by just living. After you eat a meal and digest it, you take a crap. After you drink some water you take a piss. That is pollution, but it is low level.
This is radically disconnected to what's being done to the environment now, which is not just a matter of overpopulation. Currently, as a popoluation, we are:
- wasting massive amount of resources (to observe two simple examples, just go to a restaurant, or notice huge cars in tiny towns)
- producing unmanageable amounts of waste in general (especially as consequence of the previous point)
- most importantly, producing unmanageable types of pollutants (read HN more attentively, and you'll find recent talks of microplastics)
Cleaning up after polluting is at best considerably more expensive, at worst, impossible to perform, than not polluting in the first place.
And keep in mind that I'm talking about regulating (that is, at least reducing) pollution, not abolishing it (that is, going Amish).
Should we also stop making entertainment and games until we fix this little planet of ours? Don't do anything else that isn't "fix the earth" related? If not, why is space singled out as the one thing we're not allowed to do?
There is very little that happens in space with regards to scarce resources that could not also be solved here on earth, for cheaper.
I am not suggesting humanity should be banned from space. But to borrow a line from another great scifi show - what has humanity done to earn our place in the stars? How have we treated what we have already been given? What have we done with this? Is there any - and I ask, any, - indication here on this planet that says we will treat what we find out there with any more or less respect than how we treat this planet?
This isn't about fixing earth. It's about fixing ourselves. The problem isn't the earth. And if the problem is us, then our problems go with us wherever we go. We have to fix the way we treat the universe around us first.
My question to you is simply why do we need to fix ourselves first? Seems illogical and unlikely.
Fundamentally, space doesn't care if we treat it with respect or not.
If we don't fix how we interoperate as a species with our lived environment, we will die. There is no magic solution in space. We either fix ourselves - we change how we interoperate with the environment - or we die. Going into space solves nothing.
They are doing it because it's possible and they want to do it. You don't single them out as unproductive in your quest to fix the planet. Why?
So we can grow to become the aliens from Independence Day.
Once that was proved, and the technology to deliver long range nuclear weapons implemented, the motivation to push this stuff at all costs dropped.
Put another way: back then it was science in the service of warfare with an effectively unlimited budget. Now it's mostly just the science.
The moon mission had only one goal: to save the face after the US has lost all meaningful milestones to the Soviet Union and to "win" the space race by moving the goalpost. I am quite confident, that if the Soviets has managed to land on the Moon first, the goalpost would've been landing on Mars.
With rapidly dropping launch costs there's valid industrial applications in orbit and quite a few startups working on building things in LEO and bringing them back down. Microgravity is incredibly valuable in manufacturing, the Brits worked that out in the 1700's with shot towers. Same with ultra low temps and vacuum conditions.
No way that is true.
In reality, the JWST serves as much practical purpose as crewed space exploitation. Maybe even less.
That's something you can do launching rockets. It's something you can do in orbit. And for deep space the moon is close enough (and by many measures, harder then Mars to land on) to safely yet effectively test practical systems of the type you'd want to go to Mars (consider: Mars' atmosphere is incredibly thin, so it's more Moonlike then Earth like).
Also bear in mind that this is federal social services. Once we tally state and municipal level social service programs, the amount of resources dedicated to space-related activities is a rounding error.
> Sticking another billion dollars into fixing housing would have a negligible difference.
It would if we ... built houses.