Moon One?

[Lord Wasteland]

I was thinking that since 'Mars' seems too extreme for a colonization effort, why not try the moon. Look at where we are going. If we can contact them, we can possibly have a fully-functional base on the Moon, and we can turn the Moon, into a Earth Colony...

Besides that, do you think instead of the crazy Mars-One proposal, it should be Moon-One, which makes more sense?

 

[T.Neo]

In some ways, it is easier to survive on Mars than the Moon. The advantage of the Moon is pretty much;

1. Transit times are shorter (both for people/supplies and radio signals).
2. We've been there before.

Other than that, personally, I would prefer to live on Mars.

All the other problems with Mars One would still apply- insufficient funding, issues with the mission concept, technological requirements (along with some new requirements, like a dedicated Moon lander- Dragon doesn't have enough dV to land on the Moon on its own).

But at least it would be easier to vote contestants off of the Moon. :lol:

 

[sorindafabico]

What important resources for a colony are lacking on The Moon?

Someone (of Roscosmos, if I'm not wrong) talked about an "International Lunar Base" a few weeks ago. What's the feasibility of this?

 

[T.Neo]

It isn't necessarily about lacking resources, it depends on where the resources are located and how easy it is to utilise them. In some regards the Moon is better than Mars (for example, solar energy is available at a higher wattage per square meter... but is unavailable for 14 days at a time, unless you're at a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_of_Eternal_Light"]Peak of Eternal Light[/ame]).

 

[RisingFury]

The Moon would also probably be cheaper and easier to build a base on.

Mars has a tiny bit of atmosphere. When it comes to taking off and landing, the atmosphere is a pain. It's thick enough to cause problems for entries and takeoffs, but thin enough so that parachutes aren't an effective means of landing. The good thing about the atmosphere is that it provides a bit of shielding from radiation, whereas Moon has no atmosphere...

 

[T.Neo]

The main problem with landing on Mars isn't necessarily the atmosphere, but the uncertainty of dealing with it when landing heavy payloads. That's not to say that there aren't proposed solutions- there are- they just haven't been tried out yet.

Sure, when you're sailing from Argentina, it's cheaper to reach Walvis Bay than it is to reach Durban, but Durban is a far nicer place to live, and it's available if you're simply willing to spend the extra effort to sail around Cape Agulhas.

I would imagine the Martian atmosphere also shields against small space debris to some degree, but it also has a nasty habit of blowing dust everywhere and creating sun-starving brownout conditions for sustained periods at regular intervals. I wonder if the Mars One people ever thought about that issue... :uhh:

 

[N_Molson]

orb recently published this link :

NASA - Voyages : Charting the Course for Sustainable Human Space Exploration

It points out cislunar space and lunar surface as an excellent and necessary testbed for the propulsion & life support technologies that will be required for a safe mission to Mars.

 

[T.Neo]

Didn't NASA already publish a similar document years ago? These PDF presentations would seem to have started to merge together as time goes on...

 

[EnDSchultz]

I guess with regard to sand, yes, Martian sand gets blown about but as I understand it's so much less abrasive and generally not as annoying as lunar soil.

 

[Zachstar]

Funding it is all about the funding. As before you can even send people you have to have automatic equipment to dig radiation shelters. Then you have to land a backup ERV. Then a ton of extra energy storage for the very long nights.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

 

[John_L]

Cost is dropping like a rock right now. I just don't think it's really fully sunk in what's going on with alot of people. The way I see it, commercial sat launches went over seas to Russia , Europe and Japan, and US contractors pretty much have 1 customer, so here comes Elon... He's neither of these entities, and has cost driven things below the magical $1000 / pound threshold. The Chinese have already stated they can't keep up with those sort of numbers, and you know the international aerospace community as a whole is (tacitly) saying the same thing to themselves. Within a few years, SpaceX is poised to be having more launches than the rest of the entire GLOBE combined!

How many Falcon Heavy Launches do you need? I can get ya 8 of them for round about 1 Billion USD (SpaceX has fun pack discounts for multiple launches).

You want Mars... better hurry... Elon might just beat you there. Sure, those are launch prices... so what NASA needs now is another company (or SpaceX even) to develop the systems for a Mars mission and were gold. Apply the same cost cutting techniques to develop the life support systems and other systems and I bet it can be done inside another Billion or so, putting the pricetag at about 2 billion, spread out over the length of the mission... it's about as cheap as would be needed to get the job done.

Good read... : http://www.nss.org/articles/falconheavy.html

 

[Codz]

Elon Musk is not a space messiah. I'd like to see a nice stable launch schedule being operated before you start throwing him a parade.

 

[John_L]

Agreed, much to be done... but he seems to be the only one out there doing it. Meanwhile the other day the big news of the day was Boeing taken their Dreamchaser out on a leash... not even a glide test...

Their launch mainfest is full, so in a year or so we can look back and reflect when the proposed 40 or so launches are done including the dozen or so ISS resupply missions are complete and see. Personally, I think he's on the right path... and yeah, I'm bangin' the SpaceX drum, but I don't hold him to the Messiah status either. I just think he's raised the bar significantly, even with what little has been done, that's all.

 

[Codz]

I'm cautiously optimistic about SpaceX thus far.

 

[Zachstar]

Um ok about the whole Elon going to mars thing...

Back in the real world. Launch costs are only part of the problem. Again you have to have shelters dug before people arrive. Just designing such critical robotic equipment is going to cost an insane amount of funds. Then you have to have a power system remotely landed and managed.

Oh silly me I forgot.

EVA suits (Nope Orlans from russia will not work)
A fully tested and developed life support system.
Communication systems

so on so on so on.

If it was so cheap and easy to get to the moon to stay we would have done it decades ago.

 

[T.Neo]

Just designing such critical robotic equipment is going to cost an insane amount of funds.

It is indeed a challenging proposition, but I feel that your statement (as much money as the development of such rovers would cost) is somewhat unjustified. The only point to work off of is scientific rovers developed by NASA, which are practically one-offs, produced in an organisation with a specific design culture and that contain numerous (and quite pricey) scientific instruments.

Then you have to have a power system remotely landed and managed.

It is not impossible, just an unknown. It isn't like power generating hardware has not been deployed in space before, it just hasn't been done in this specific environment.

EVA suits (Nope Orlans from russia will not work)

I don't know if anyone is seriously suggesting using Orlan as a Mars surface suit, at least not in the west (they sound bad enough to use in microgravity). Not even Mars One proposes it (they just vaguely state that Paragon Space Systems can "produce these Mars suits" :facepalm.

People are working on suit technologies with Mars in mind, it's just that the field is still fairly experimental.

Communication systems

Things in this area are improving- MRO can transmit at 6 megabits/second, and LRO at 100 megabits/second. The internet that I use to view O-F isn't a third as fast as MRO.

If it was so cheap and easy to get to the moon to stay we would have done it decades ago.

The reason people never went to the Moon to stay there decades ago isn't because it's impossibly expensive and difficult, but because the major space agencies of the time decided to take different routes of development- NASA by developing STS (which was intended to eventually lead to space infrastructure and a Moon base, which obviously never materialised) and the USSR by focusing on space stations and later, trying to copy the US.

 

[John_L]

As T.Neo pointed out, the only insanely expense is when the US government contracts to get things done. The US Government has deep pockets, so the typical response from industry is "we'll need a blank checkbook to meet your specifications and safety requirements to get this done".

SpaceX has clearly shown it's possible to develop reliable, and safe systems at a fraction of the cost. Safety has always been such a paramount issue that no one has had the guts to come forward and say we can do this, and we can do it cheaply. Why would they when the government is footing the bill?

Now, with politicians eager to gut space exploration dollars (I guess because they don't see the benefit pushing the limits of technology bring), all of a sudden we're in a position where we need to actually make things cheaper to do.

I think SpaceX has really taken the lead in showing that things can get done at a fraction of the cost, and they're not stopping there. There's a continuous push at SpaceX to reduce costs even further, so things will only get cheaper as time goes by. They've traded "let's bill out the government for every penny we can grab" for true, capitalistic competition and look what happened... 95 percent of the costs vaporized. Not because corners were cut in the development, but because the gravy train of the government checks have dried up, and it's now clear that we can do this safely, and on the cheap.

 

[Codz]

SpaceX has clearly shown it's possible to develop reliable, and safe systems at a fraction of the cost.

With two unmanned launches?

 

[mojoey]

Both of them returned safely, didnt they?

 

[Codz]

Both of them returned safely, didnt they?

That doesn't mean they've "revolutionized" manned spaceflight.