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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

I think it would be cool, and I don't know that I care if there's a "reason" to do it other than "human achievement".

I mean, there wasn't really a "reason" to go to the moon in the 60's either. I think I more or less agree with JFK on this:

"Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there'. Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it"

I could try and find a lot of justifications about medical research or something, and those might be cool, but it would be dishonest if I pitched those as a "reason" to go, because I would want us to return even if those reasons weren't there.

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If you haven’t heard it, Public Service Broadcasting used the JFK speech in their song “The Race for Space” from the album of the same name. If you’re even partially a space nerd, it’s worth a listen. Very inspirational and the final album track is relevant to todays news.

https://youtu.be/4HZAc7EKFJQ

When Mallory climbed on Everest (and possibly summited) it was a big deal because it had never been done. When Hilary and Tenzing did it, it pushed human achievement forward.

Today people still do it, but it means nothing to anyone other than those people.

Going to the moon in the 60s was an impressive feat. It pushed the boundary forward. But that's all it did. There's literally nothing of value there.

Sure most of the people who saw that are dead, or will be in the next 20 years. So it will seem "cool" to the next generation. But selling "cool" to a congressional appropriations committee is a tough sell.

We aren't gonna colonize the moon (or indeed mars) because frankly it would be too expensive, and there's no point. There literally is nothing to gain from a colony in either place, and there's no way to fund it (and no reason to fund it.)

> There's literally nothing of value there.

ISRU water to hydrolox to reduce amount of uplift from earth's gravity well?

But you have to get a lot of other supplies to the moon to make use of that. Space travel will never be useful enough to pull that off. A self sustaining colony on mars is just barely possible (but I'm not sure if it is worth it), no place else in space will ever be colonized. The laws of physics are too harsh - only a "generation" ship could even leave our solar system (well you could put a child on something to leave and come back in old age without generations, but this would be pointless and unethical), and we have no reason to think those would last long enough to make the nearest star, much less one with habitable planets (which we might need to terraform).

The moon lacks too much to be self sustainable. Mars is a stretch: it is likely someone will reply that mars isn't possible and they will have good points, so while I have concluded it is just possible I can see the points of those who think it is not.

As well as aluminium to make solid fuel.

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