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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: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 08 2016, @09:33PM
Well, it probably will never matter to most of the population on Earth regardless, except in a "Yay, humanity may survive this apocalypse after all" kind of way.
Consider, the current mortality rate on Earth is roughly 8 people per thousand per year - that translates to about 162,000 per day. The birth rate is even higher. Any sort of mass-exodus from Earth would have to be substantially faster than that just to gain ground against new births. That's a lot of rocket fuel.