SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the Mike-and-Manny-and-Wyo-say-"Hi!" dept.
https://phys.org/news/2017-09-moon-lunar-village.html (AFP)
By 2040, a hundred people will live on the Moon, melting ice for water, 3D-printing homes and tools, eating plants grown in lunar soil, and competing in low-gravity, "flying" sports.
To those who mock such talk as science fiction, experts such as Bernard Foing, ambassador of the European Space Agency-driven "Moon Village" scheme, reply the goal is not only reasonable but feasible too.
At a European Planetary Science Congress in Riga this week, Foing spelt out how humanity could gain a permanent foothold on Earth's satellite, and then expand.
He likened it to the growth of the railways, when villages grew around train stations, followed by businesses.
By 2030, there could be an initial lunar settlement of six to 10 pioneers—scientists, technicians and engineers—which could grow to 100 by 2040, he predicted.
"In 2050, you could have a thousand and then... naturally you could envisage to have family" joining crews there, Foing told AFP .
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday September 26 2017, @08:16PM (2 children)
No actual work, of course. And you're forecasting a lunar colony in 13 years from a single mission four years ago?
No, it hasn't. For example, in real dollars the NASA budget is higher now than it was in the late 1970s. It has been higher, but it also has been lower.
Unless, of course, they don't do that. Schedule slippage is a common thing and there have been projects such as propellant cross-feed on the Falcon Heavy that haven't come about.
Me too.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:41AM (1 child)
And again you resort to Reddit like behavior. Changing your own goal posts, habitually taking things out of context, and generally showing an inability to provide any valuable content whatsoever. Excuse the ad hominem but this is a recurring pattern from you, and seemingly only you. Okay, we can all forgive Aristarchus. He's clearly touched. I do not believe you are. Act like an adult.
This [wikipedia.org] is the udget of NASA. Their peak in 1966 was about 43.6 billion dollars - almost all dedicated to a single project. Following our victory that precipitously declined to where it finally bottomed out in the late 70s, which is where you had to go to find a point lower than today. The lowest level it reached was about 14.3 billion dollars. It then saw a modest climb peaking up to 23.7 billion in 1992 - 25 years ago. It's been on a constant decline ever since down now to 18.x billion. And again huge chunks of that already modest budget are eaten up by mandatory spending that's acccomplishing absolutely nothing.
The rest of your pointless nit picks are you shifting your goal posts, as usual - since most of everything you state is provably wrong.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday September 27 2017, @07:43PM
You are right. This is ad hominem and irrelevant to the discussion. Let's move on.
There are several things to remember about the Chinese space program though not a one is unique to them:
1) Their efforts move at a snail's pace.
2) They've made promises like this repeatedly over the past couple of decades and haven't delivered on them.
3) Their leaders are very sensitive to risk.
4) And there's a lot that needs to happen between demonstration of humans in space and a soft landing on the Moon, till we see some sort of colony or outpost on the Moon. This progress isn't happening.
The entirety of aerospace, whether it be government programs or private efforts is chock full of these sorts of problems and delays. After you've spent a few decades observing such issues, you get a feeling for what isn't serious. Announcements without any sort of concrete schedule is an example of what isn't serious.
Yes, that's what I called nearly constant. We had mandatory spending accomplishing nothing back then too with the Shuttle operating and ISS development underway. That would be more in current dollars than the current SLS development costs per year.