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posted by
martyb
on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:17AM
from the build-a-space-elevator-on-the-moon dept.
from the build-a-space-elevator-on-the-moon dept.
NASA seems hell bent to go to Mars, but can't afford to on its own.
Its international partners have no stomach for that — they would would rather return to our moon and build a base there for further exploration.
Doesn't going back to the moon make more sense? Build a base on the moon, and use its low gravity and possible water at the poles as propellant for further space exploration?
Why not the moon first?
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/7/11868840/moon-return-journey-to-mars-nasa-congress-space-policy
Links:
From NASA itself, in 2008: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/series/moon/why_go_back.html
The all-knowing, ever-trustworthy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_the_Moon
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Should We Skip Mars for Now and Go to the Moon Again?
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(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:28AM
SpaceX could drive launch costs to low earth orbit below $1000 per pound this year and down to $10 per pound by 2025 [nextbigfuture.com]
SpaceX to send 3 unmanned missions to Mars that would lead to a manned Mars mission in 2024 [nextbigfuture.com]
SpaceX Falcon 9 Payloads Set to Increase Up to 73%; SpaceX Will Deliver to Mars [soylentnews.org]
SpaceX claims that they can get payloads to Mars for under $100 million. They have begun to achieve routine landings of rocket stages on a drone barge, and are near the next step of actually reusing some rockets for what I assume would be non-critical payloads. Now they are planning multiple missions to Mars and a manned mission [wikipedia.org]. Oddly enough we had no article on this SpaceX 2024 MANNED MISSION but it looks like the real announcement with more details will be made in 3 months. NASA's plans for a manned Mars mission were for around 2035. Either mission could see the round trip time cut to less than half using new propulsion designs, and radiation risks for even the longer duration mission aren't really that bad.
To answer the question, it seems a Mars mission will be more affordable than previously thought, and that launch costs in general are about to fall so much that we could see robots and bases on the Moon before long, and concurrent with any Mars efforts. China and Russia seem to be taking more interest in the Moon.
I don't think NASA is unneeded, after all, SpaceX's (Elon Musk's) Mars ambitions are part vanity and part government-funded rather than commercial-oriented. NASA should focus on launching more next generation space observatories, landers on icy moons, and robotic solar system exploration. The James Webb Space Telescope and another observatory such as ATLAST [stsci.edu] are likely to be NASA's primary projects before a 2030s Mars mission.
The best moon mission I can think of would involve building a massive telescope on the far side of the moon. But we may be about to undergo a revolution in optics that could make all of our telescopes much bigger: Flat lens promises possible revolution in optics [bbc.com] (Soylent thread [soylentnews.org]). If we can start making scopes with capabilities matching the $8 billion JWST for under say, $500 million, it's time to start launching a new one every year.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:37AM
Elon will take you there! Climb on His back and let His holy flatulence propel you! TO the MOON and BEYOND.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:45AM
What are you, some kind of hipster troll? Musk is too popular for you to resist trolling but is delivering on his promises.
inb4 fellatio response. Your playbook is stale and semen-crusted.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:52AM
hipster troll
I hate popular things! Hate, hate, hate! Suck my pointy hair! Drool in it! Make me need a shower!
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday June 08 2016, @10:14AM
I would be quite happy to poke fun of you for your breathless enthusiasm at so much vaporware, but the thing is Mr Musk really does have a tendency to turn his dreams and promises into real projects and products. If he delivers only a quarter of what he proposes (which I think is well within the realms of possibility) then it will be a very impressive result and a big push forwards for our species.
What I really came here to ask is your (ie, the SN community) opinion on the following: In eighty years, two hundred years and a thousand years, how will history remember Elon Musk, if at all? How much of his ambition do you think he will he realise? If he achieves great things, will somebody else sweep in after him and steal all the eternal glory and credit? Will he be forgotten or will there be a giant statue of him for centuries to come on the main concourse of Mars Spaceport? Will he laughed at as a loser who blew his fortune on a stupid dream or praised as the patron saint of space travellers? Will Elon Musk be a mere footnote to someone else's achievements, or a name that echoes down the ages like Alexander the Great?
Discuss.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @11:06AM
I think his legacy will eclipse Steve Jobs. The projects he's involved in (electric cars, battery manufacturing and sales, solar manufacturing and leasing, Hyperloop, spaceflight) have the potential to be more transformative. Just increasing the energy density of batteries has a huge impact on many technologies, including those silly watches Steve Jobs didn't get a chance to flog, and is complementary to solar and electric vehicle pursuits.
I think the years in which SpaceX could simply fail are past. It is an established player in the spaceflight industry, catering to both governments and companies. Any edge that ULA might have had will be gone if SpaceX can successfully carry astronauts to the ISS without killing them. Elon Musk's Tesla is where I see a business that could fail spectacularly, and where hype has to translate into ever-increasing direct sales to consumers rather than satellite launches and trips to the ISS.
SpaceX's true test will be their quest to lower the cost/kg of payload launches. Getting it to $100/kg or less would be revolutionary and will allow subsequent pioneers to actually commercialize spaceflight beyond government-funded activity and tourism. This is where Musk could lose a little luster, since ULA, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, etc. will be trying to copy the reusable rocket success and may make it work better than Musk can. Also, alternative approaches such as the Skylon spaceplane may be able to lower $/kg while looking a lot more how we envision the future of space travel (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. is all about single-stage-to-orbit).
Musk is more than a footnote in the history of space travel, but perhaps hasn't reached the chapter level yet. That will require the success of reusable rockets. Some subsequent pioneers will be more important than Musk on a large timescale, such as those involved in asteroid mining. Those will be the people engaging in activity that increases the scale of human civilization. Although Musk has big plans for Mars, I don't see him as the founder or leader of a sustainable colony, since further decades of technological advancement will be needed to more easily adapt to what is hardly an environment suitable for humans (Antarctica at its coldest is playtime compared to Mars). The people involved in such efforts will go down in history, since for the first time in years, new nations will be formed on "fresh" land, with relative independence from Earth political influence and network latency that will hinder the exchange of dank memes with Earth.
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(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday June 08 2016, @04:41PM
In eighty years, two hundred years and a thousand years, how will history remember Elon Musk, if at all?
The man who claimed the right of Prima Nocta over Mars. If we get life extension soon enough his reign might last as long as the Babylonian god-kings of old!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 08 2016, @12:28PM
about the flat lens thing: big telescopes are not just about reducing aberrations, they are also about gathering more light. I guess that if you can focus the light you do receive much better, than you won't need as much of it, but I think "big" telescopes will still be needed if we want to see faint things in general.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 08 2016, @07:24PM
SpaceX could drive launch costs to low earth orbit below $1000 per pound this year and down to $10 per pound by 2025
No. $10 per pound is completely ignorant of the cost of rocket fuel. SpaceX has already reduced the cost of the launch (at $1000 per pound) where the cost of the propellant becomes a significant fraction. It takes something like 25-50 pounds of propellant to put something in orbit with a Falcon 9. Most of that propellant mass will be diesel fuel (which I believe is well over a dollar a pound for high quality jet fuel plus some contribution from the considerably cheaper liquid oxygen (LOX)) and hence you're looking at something like $25-50 of fuel cost per pound of payload.
Even airlines, which have a reusability that Falcon 9 will never be able to achieve, have fuel costs which are a third of total marginal cost of a flight roughly. So a similar cost multiplier yields cost per pound around $75-150 per pound as the absolute floor for the cost of any chemical powered rocket based on the particularly cheap choice of diesel fuel and LOX.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:41PM
Not that I am not skeptical of the $10 number, but it looks like they are trying to cheapen it with a new methane mix. From the link:
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:52AM
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday June 09 2016, @02:06AM
I have to wonder if Russia and China want to mine the moon for He3 [wikipedia.org] as its more plentiful there (the only place its more plentiful is the gas giants) and it looks like it will be required for fusion reactors to become a reality.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.