Comment by mey | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mey | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical about the stated reasons to go back. The only one that seems of any actual rarity is the moon rocks themselves, but that seems unlikely to be a sufficient recurring revenue stream. Aka, once everyone can get one, what's the attraction?

Rare Earth are available, just most terrestrial mines have shut down because there is not a sufficient market place to make it worth while.

Helium-3 can be manufactured. So again, terrestrial production can be increased.

Not going to comment on platinum.

Honestly the most value I could see on the moon is the production of resources to sustain life and fuel to act as a higher orbit refueling platform. Both are critical to get humans and machines active in space.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum

As to why the Moon would make a good refueling platform

  http://xkcd.com/681_large/

Deimos is a better place to refuel.

http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/the_deimos_water_company....

I like the idea of manufacturing spacecraft parts on the Moon. There is no oxygen so metallurgy may be easier, gravity is lower, so some alloys should be easier to make and there is abundant energy in the form of sunlight. I don't know about its mineralogy, but I would suspect it's rich in light metals.

Also, a radiotelescope on the far side would be shielded from Earth's interferences.

And, of course, someone has to bury a big black brick in Tycho so future generations can be puzzled.

    Also, a radiotelescope on the far side would be shielded from Earth's interferences.

While that would be really awesome, I'm pretty sure a radio telescope could be shielded just as well with a few sheets of metal (like the James Webb telescope). And if it's stuck to the surface of the moon, it's a lot more restricted in where it can point at any one time than one free-floating in space would be.

You can't shield an earth ground-based telescope from the atmosphere. And the Arecebo fixed telescope seems to work quite well - one of those in a moon crater would be an extremely sensitive instrument.

Nah, the big black box thing only works if you haven't left a bunch if other less mysterious crap lying around. If we colonise the Moon, we'll have to leave the monolith elsewhere. Callisto or Ganymede look like likely customers... Though quite frankly we're starting to get to the point where we've left enough stuff lying around that our entire solar system's mystery quotient has been seriously compromised...

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