Gingrich invokes Kennedy - Promises Lunar Moon Base by 2020

[ichy]

The attitude is comparable. "It's expensive so we shouldn't do it" is a terrible attitude for a society to have that wants to advance.

The fact that you're talking about mining the moon shows how utterly clueless you are about this. Barring some truly revolutionary advancements in space launch technology that will never be feasible.

I'm in favor of NASA's manned spaceflight program and would like to see it get more money, but we need to be honest and say that it would be about exploration, NOT colonization or mining or anything of that nature. Until we find a vastly more efficient way to get things out of Earth's gravity well then any talk of colonizing other parts of this solar system are nothing but fantasies.

 

[zsdersw]

The fact that you're talking about mining the moon shows how utterly clueless you are about this. Barring some truly revolutionary advancements in space launch technology that will never be feasible.

The fact that you're talking about things "never" being feasible shows how utterly clueless you are about this. There's lots of things that were said to "never be feasible" that ultimately came to happen or to exist.

I'm in favor of NASA's manned spaceflight program and would like to see it get more money, but we need to be honest and say that it would be about exploration, NOT colonization or mining or anything of that nature. Until we find a vastly more efficient way to get things out of Earth's gravity well then any talk of colonizing other parts of this solar system are nothing but fantasies.

Exploration must come before mining/colonization, for sure, but that doesn't mean mining/colonization is impossible in the future.

 

[cybrsage]

The fact that you're talking about things "never" being feasible shows how utterly clueless you are about this. There's lots of things that were said to "never be feasible" that ultimately came to happen or to exist.

Exploration must come before mining/colonization, for sure, but that doesn't mean mining/colonization is impossible in the future.

Agreed on both accounts.

 

[cybrsage]

It'd be awesome if the collision that formed the Moon ended up leaving the platinum-group elements closer to the crust than they're theorized to be on Earth. Platinum-group elements like to be around iron, and during Earth's formation, they'd have sunk to the bottom of the delicious liquid center.

I wonder what that means for Mars, where Iron is all over the surface.

 

[Modelworks]

The USA needs something to bring back some hope that we are not just more of the same we can't do anything anymore attitude and the moon could be that hope, it brings jobs, manufacturing, research, and don't forget all the technology that we gain as a result. Or we can keep doing more of the same bashing the USA, becoming the stalled out economy and education system and letting other countries take the lead.

Around 2013, a Chinese lunar probe will land on the moon and release a rover on the surface, the second stage of the three-stage lunar exploration plan.

The third stage, which will see samples brought back from the moon, will also start during the next five years, the paper said.

The Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft will weigh about 5,830 pounds (2,650 kg) at liftoff, ISRO said. The orbiter will weigh 3,080 pounds (1,400 kg) and the lander about 2,750 pounds (1,250 kg). Development of the spacecraft is currently under way at various ISRO centers throughout the country.
The mission is scheduled to launch in 2013 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, about 50 miles (80 km) north of the south Indian city of Chennai.

 

[Ausm]

According to Back to the Future, I can already power my truck off of a couple banana peels and a half full can of Bud.

I tried it in college...no go man.

 

[ichy]

The fact that you're talking about things "never" being feasible shows how utterly clueless you are about this. There's lots of things that were said to "never be feasible" that ultimately came to happen or to exist.

Jesus, this is like arguing with a child who repeats back everything you say and thinks he's being funny.

Right now it would cost upwards of $10,000/pound just to get something from the Earth on a TLI trajectory. Landing it on the moon, launching it from the moon and then returning it to earth would probably raise the price by another order of magnitude. This isn't because of a lack of vision, it's because of the laws of physics. No amount of improvement in chemical rocket technology will ever make rockets an efficient way to get things into orbit.

Commercial activity on the moon will not be feasible without something like a functional space elevator. You can spout off all the idiotic comparisons you want to Columbus exploring the new world but they won't change the physics of the problem.

 

[ichy]

It's sad to think what NASA could have achieved using Apollo era technology if we'd just stuck with improved versions of what we had in the 1960s rather than squandering money on the space shuttle.

There was enough hardware sitting around to launch two more lunar missions or another lunar mission and a second Skylab station. If NASA had ordered a second batch of Saturn Vs with improved F-1A engines (which we already developed but never built) they could launched a second round of lunar missions with significantly more payloads for serious scientific work.

Skylab-style stations which could be launched in one shot by a Saturn V would've also been a far more cost effective way to do research in LEO compared to the white elephant International Space Station.

 

[zsdersw]

Jesus, this is like arguing with a child who repeats back everything you say and thinks he's being funny.

Right now it would cost upwards of $10,000/pound just to get something from the Earth on a TLI trajectory. Landing it on the moon, launching it from the moon and then returning it to earth would probably raise the price by another order of magnitude. This isn't because of a lack of vision, it's because of the laws of physics. No amount of improvement in chemical rocket technology will ever make rockets an efficient way to get things into orbit.

Commercial activity on the moon will not be feasible without something like a functional space elevator. You can spout off all the idiotic comparisons you want to Columbus exploring the new world but they won't change the physics of the problem.

Try to be less of an idiot. You said something would "never be feasible". Never is a long time... and, more often than not, those who at one time said something could never be done have been proven wrong.

 

[ichy]

Try to be less of an idiot. You said something would "never be feasible". Never is a long time... and, more often than not, those who at one time said something could never be done have been proven wrong.

Try reading what I said properly before hurling insults. The full sentence was "Barring some truly revolutionary advancements in space launch technology that will never be feasible."

We will never colonize the moon or any other planet as long as we're using chemical rockets to launch payloads. Period. End of story. If we built a space elevator or some other revolutionary game-changer when for launching things into orbit the equation would change completely, but that is still a challenge of epic proportions. It's not an unsolvable problems, but technologically it is a far bigger leap than sailing ships across the Atlantic was in 1492.

We ought to be talking about better ways to manufacture long ribbons out of carbon nano-tubes, because until we can overcome those kinds of challenges any talk of mining the moon is space cadet fantasy nonsense.

 

[zsdersw]

Try reading what I said properly before hurling insults. The full sentence was "Barring some truly revolutionary advancements in space launch technology that will never be feasible."

We will never colonize the moon or any other planet as long as we're using chemical rockets to launch payloads. Period. End of story. If we built a space elevator or some other revolutionary game-changer when for launching things into orbit the equation would change completely, but that is still a challenge of epic proportions. It's not an unsolvable problems, but technologically it is a far bigger leap than sailing ships across the Atlantic was in 1492.

We ought to be talking about better ways to manufacture long ribbons out of carbon nano-tubes, because until we can overcome those kinds of challenges any talk of mining the moon is space cadet fantasy nonsense.

Fine, then don't equate what I'm saying to "arguing with a child".

I agree with current launch technology it's not going to happen.

 

[Jeff7]

I wonder what that means for Mars, where Iron is all over the surface.

Iron's not entirely rare in Earth's crust either, though I don't know the relative concentrations of iron in Earth's crust vs Mars'. And our thorough studies of Mars' surface still only consist of a few sample areas, and very limited in depth.

If Mars was also gooey at some time during its formation, it likely would have the same thing happen - the denser stuff, like iron, would sink to the core, and the platinum-group would go with it, then continue to sink to the center.

I wonder if there is much in the crust in the platinum group though. It'd still be damn tough to justify the cost though. I think a proposed sample return mission was going to bring back several grams of material. Unless we're mining antimatter, that's not going to pay off.

The fact that you're talking about mining the moon shows how utterly clueless you are about this. Barring some truly revolutionary advancements in space launch technology that will never be feasible.

I'm in favor of NASA's manned spaceflight program and would like to see it get more money, but we need to be honest and say that it would be about exploration, NOT colonization or mining or anything of that nature. Until we find a vastly more efficient way to get things out of Earth's gravity well then any talk of colonizing other parts of this solar system are nothing but fantasies.

Best way to do it: Solar-powered or chemically-powered nanoscale fabrication bots, each one able to replicate itself using available raw materials.
Sure we'd just need a few advances in nanofabrication techniques, materials separation, and machines capable of microscopic assembly in a dusty vacuum...but hey, once we do, we'll have our own army of Replicators ready to do our Moon mining.

 

[PottedMeat]

Best way to do it: Solar-powered or chemically-powered nanoscale fabrication bots, each one able to replicate itself using available raw materials.
Sure we'd just need a few advances in nanofabrication techniques, materials separation, and machines capable of microscopic assembly in a dusty vacuum...but hey, once we do, we'll have our own army of Replicators ready to do our Moon mining.

starting with off-world automated manufacturing and fuel production would be sweet. constructed with robots, we wouldn't have to worry about little things like life support for a while.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I'll leave open this possibility: some sort of antimatter/matter reactor. There was another recent thread where I went over a lot of the calculations - did you see those calculations? I invited people to attempt to poke holes in them. I haven't checked back, but afaik, no one was able to dispute the figures.

The physical law I'm mostly referring to is conservation of energy. The minimum amount of energy necessary for such a trip is overwhelmingly huge. Chemically, impossible. Via fusion - borderline, but I believe on the impossible side. That is, unless you decide that your goal isn't necessarily to travel to another star, but rather, to build a permanent traveling space base that doesn't depend on solar power. By permanent, I mean, 1000's of years of generation after generation of humans.

I can make some suggestions based on today's potential technologies. Here's an off the cuff plan. Of course is of necessity speculative but not unreasonable and the order of the steps may be different based on how development works out.

Build a space elevator.
construct von neumann machines
mine the moon for he3 and develop propulsion technologies for this
send von neumann machines to the target planet to build the base.
Send robots to a carbon asteroid to mine and produce a graphene ship. Lightweight and strong. Have a narrow profile to minimize frontal exposure to debris/radiation.
Send a crew in suspension with human embryos to be revived when appropriate.

This approach would minimize payload and because there is a running system in, place helps to ensure survivability.

This isn't happening in our lifetimes, but in three or five hundred years? Why not?