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Who will be the first to put a human on the Moon in this century?
| 11% | 30 votes |
| 1% | 4 votes |
| 39% | 99 votes |
| 5% | 15 votes |
| 1% | 5 votes |
| 28% | 72 votes |
| 0% | 1 votes |
| 10% | 26 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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Who will be the first to put a human on the Moon in this century?
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(1)
(1)
You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 03 2019, @11:28PM (3 children)
chromas is going there Ralph Kramden style. Bang! Zoom!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday June 03 2019, @11:39PM
YouTube clip [youtube.com] for those who have no idea about what TMB is talking about.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:17PM (1 child)
Sheeeit! Voted other just to make that joke.....grrrrrrr......
:)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 14 2019, @12:45AM
It's a quality descendant-annoying joke for sure.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bart9h on Tuesday June 04 2019, @12:40AM (6 children)
If people are not dying on space exploration, we are not pushing it hard enough.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 04 2019, @02:04AM
Are you suggesting we need more of https://smelly.info/JYWuqm [smelly.info]
Note it didn't say "Who will be the first to put a live human on the Moon in this century?"
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday June 05 2019, @08:35PM (4 children)
That's a good point. People tend to die on Everest every year, and that's a well-worn path by now.
The biggest difference is probably the budget required for either trip. I think a likely moon trip (excluding R&D, maybe?) would cost about 4 orders of magnitude more than a typical Everest excursion. That puts it out of range of most individuals, so investors would be required. Investors tend to like repeatable results, so they are biased toward the non-dying type of mission.
(I suppose deadly moon launches are technically repeatable, but there would be non-technical roadblocks imposed from outside to limit deaths.)
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday June 06 2019, @09:15PM
Get reality-TV shows involved - as long as no gory details for the deaths are broadcast, the Big Brother aficionados will bite, even if it involves dying instead of eviction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 10 2019, @06:19PM (2 children)
Depends on the type of investor. Investors with lots of money, like Venture Capitalists, tend to live pretty high on the risk/reward continuum. Lots of risk is acceptable, as long as the (risk X reward) product justifies it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mobydisk on Tuesday June 18 2019, @09:57PM (1 child)
The problem is there is no capital reward to going to the moon. Venture capitalists like capital.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 18 2019, @10:53PM
You're lacking creativity, in the 1960s you could have signed CocaCola as a sponsor and they would have paid millions to have their logo visible on the face of the moon... I'm sure there are similar deep-pocket sponsors around today who would pay for the rights to a documentary of the mission plus direction of the mission objectives.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday June 04 2019, @01:10AM
NASA + SLS (ULA/Boeing/etc.) is a "strong" contender. Might be more likely than Falcon Heavy. But it's possible that SLS or Falcon Heavy gets crew to the LOP-G, and then a lander plops them down on the Moon (Blue Origin?).
Of course, if SpaceX can send artists around the Moon in a BFR by 2023, maybe they can get someone walking around there before an almost-sure-to-be-delayed NASA Artemis manned mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 04 2019, @08:21PM (8 children)
How about a poll on when SLS will first fly?
Maybe on whether it will fly only once, or how many times we can afford to fly it.
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(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday June 07 2019, @12:44AM (7 children)
I predict it will fly once if it blows up, thrice if it doesn't.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday June 07 2019, @01:55PM (6 children)
We'll get our money's worth. Especially since the SLS uses an expensive reusable space shuttle derived engine, and puts it on an expendable launcher.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 10 2019, @06:21PM (5 children)
The "reusable" space shuttle boosters cost more to recover and refurbish than manufacturing new ones did. It just played better in Peoria to see them being towed back from the Indian Ocean and "reused," regardless of reality.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 10 2019, @06:31PM (4 children)
I meant the SSMEs not SRBs.
Nevertheless, you definitely make a good point.
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(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 10 2019, @08:06PM (3 children)
The economics of reuse is debatable all up and down the scale, from plastic grocery bags vs reusable totes all the way up through rocket engines.
Personally, I think the automotive industry has been selling bad tech for 40 years making new automobiles more and more disposable - straight economics would seem to point toward refurbishment as better for the environment AND the owners' pocketbooks.
However, if the SSMEs were ground-up redesigned to be single use instead of multiple use, they could likely save a significant sounding amount per engine - but the engineering hours and validation testing required to do that for a manned mission rated engine probably cost more than the differential cost of hundreds, maybe thousands of engines - not to mention the program schedule impacts.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday June 10 2019, @09:08PM (2 children)
SpaceX (hopefully, eventually) will launch a manned mission using reusable engines -- but new, not reused, on the manned launch.
I tend to believe that SpaceX has shown or is close to showing the economics of re-use. The cheap launch prices. But then, we really don't know if they are making money.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday July 02 2019, @03:45PM (1 child)
EBIDTA is, AFAIK, positive for those guys, but EBIDTA + "extravagant Research and Development expenses" is always negative for those guys, and the financial markets just keep tossing money at them, so they'll keep doing it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:35PM
They must think it a worthwhile investment.
Maybe a new accounting abbreviation for the extravagant research should be created.
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(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 04 2019, @09:09PM (11 children)
They will spend ridiculous amounts of money for national prestige. Out of the choices given, they are the only dictatorship. Their "congress" has no power to tell the government that it is a waste of money.
(Score: 4, Touché) by takyon on Tuesday June 04 2019, @10:46PM
Neither does our own. They mandated the waste and have no interest in removing it.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 05 2019, @02:55PM (5 children)
I voted China. I think they have the most determination to put people there. They certainly have the determination to embarrass the US and it's allies. Everybody else seems to want to go to the moon, but they aren't willing to take the risks associated with it. That includes financial risks. Those who are willing to take some risk, sometimes seem too cautious. China only cares that they aren't terribly embarrassed with a failure. They'll work hard to beat all the rest of us.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday June 05 2019, @06:41PM (2 children)
What risk? There's nothing valuable up there worth rushing for. It's a sure loss.
More importantly, China doesn't even have plans to land until the 2030s while the US and Russia already have fully funded programs with early-mid 2020s launch dates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon#Crewed [wikipedia.org]
China will get there 3rd, 4th or even 5th depending on Japan's and the EU's economy.
compiling...
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 08 2019, @01:26AM (1 child)
I think that the EU will be next -- They have plenty of new monkies to send into space.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RamiK on Saturday June 08 2019, @10:21AM
The EU as a whole doesn't have a strong industrial aerospace lobby. Even in Germany and France getting a budget for maintaining the satellite launch platforms is a struggle and their last moon program was scraped in 2012. There's no way they can get it through the union.
If you put aside the corporate corruption, the key reason to go to the moon is to give STEMs busywork during the recession to prevent a decline in technological independence. Throw in some class-struggle and the fear of a left-leaning Academia and you'd start seeing why the US would want to go to the moon. But, while much of this applies to Russia, India and even China, it means little to the EU.
The EU's "moon shot" is going to be focused on reclaiming and advancing information technologies independence, super-computing facilities and self driving cars. They want industrial robots. They want silicon patents. They want navigation software databases. They're far more worried about Google than Huawei since they can replace Huawei with some Indian or Korean manufacturer but can't say the same about Google. And while they can't agree on much, they all look at your "old employer"'s Spot Mini with the same thoughts in mind and fears at heart. So that's where they'll aim.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 13 2019, @10:29PM (1 child)
Are you aware that the US already had some people talk on the moon some years back?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday June 14 2019, @01:07AM
Americans talk everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:03AM (2 children)
Russia is a dictatorship in sheep's clothing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 19 2019, @09:46AM (1 child)
Russia is a flailing alcoholic. Roscosmos can't do anything new right. Luckily, they have Soyuz launch contracts, but that won't be around for long.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 19 2019, @10:37AM
Which doesn't negate the stated sentence.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday June 21 2019, @10:58PM
I voted China, but just to play devil's advocate let's look at what might hold them back. First, they might care more about terrestrial military might. They're working on aircraft carriers to compete with the USA, and they're showing imperialist action on the seas. Imperialism is expensive. Second, they rely on trade to drive their economic engine and Trump is working to dismantle that trade. Third, "it's been done". They might prefer to push for Mars instead. Fourth, they might just do some analysis and decide that while a "prestige" shot is possible, they can't justify an ongoing presence at this time. They can be very practical as evidenced by their "communism" that is about as far from communism as you can get.
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(Score: 5, Funny) by Hartree on Thursday June 06 2019, @06:37AM (2 children)
The Kerbals got smart and started playing Human Space Program.
Much lower death rate for Kerbals.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday June 08 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)
I remember as a kid reading an Estes catalog around 1989 or 90, they advertised one of their medium-large rockets with a parachute-packed egg-shaped compartment as being large enough to carry a mouse*, then fucking literally:
Pretty goddamn brutal, come to think of it. Well, that was right around the Waco and Ruby Ridge days so no big surprise there.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 10 2019, @06:29PM
These are the same kits that I made in the 1978-1985 timeframe, the ones that told you how to sand the balsa fins to airfoil cross sections, fill the roughness, fillet the fin roots to the body, etc. etc. I usually just slapped 'em together and sprayed 'em with whatever dad had spare in the garage, but... one time I really followed all the directions, got the fins profiled mirror smooth and filleted, glassy smooth body, etc. Put a C engine in that sucker and launched - it went so high that I could barely see the 18" parachute when it popped, and even that disappeared after a few seconds.
After that I started making my rocket bodies out of paper towel tubes, cutting my own fins out of balsa stock, and leaving them square edged and rough faced - was much more fun when you could make 'em quick and cheap and get multiple launches per body. Even more fun when the rubber cement hadn't dried on one and it landed on the roof in flames. I had gotten a ladder from the garage, blown out the fire, repaired the damage and put everything away before the fire department (stationed about 1/2 mile away) showed up - seems a neighbor was concerned about the fire on the roof - gotta love that response time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday June 09 2019, @09:15PM (2 children)
Think we'll have supersonic air travel in this century?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 10 2019, @06:33PM
Already had that in the 1960s - if your daddy was a Bush and your middle initial was W.
Will we have affordable, regularly scheduled commercial SST service? Not likely - the only reason current jets fly as fast as they do is because it maximizes their ROI, with market forces if they could go slower and save money they would.
There are real costs to travelling that much faster, and most people aren't willing to pay the difference.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 11 2019, @03:04AM
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-elon-musk-wants-starship-spaceliners/ [teslarati.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by gznork26 on Tuesday June 11 2019, @04:40AM (1 child)
Does anyone know whether the Duchy of Grand Fenwick, whose ship provided refreshments for the US and USSR missions in 'The Mouse on the Moon', was planning to provide similar services for the new crop of contestants?
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday June 12 2019, @08:38PM
Wow...it's been sooo many decades since I saw that, lol!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday June 11 2019, @07:25AM
China of course! Whether the human is alive or otherwise is a different matter. There's no lawsuits and fake news in China, only the Emperor's desires - so when shit needs to be done, it gets done without all the cover your arse paperwork. Fail fast and get shit done!
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday June 13 2019, @08:54AM (5 children)
It's interesting; I don't know whether the poll is designed to survey nations' chances of landing on the moon or survey soylentils' attitudes to tech advances for different nations.
Nb: ESA is not even bothering. Interesting attitude and possibly correct?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday June 14 2019, @11:12AM (2 children)
Word came out that we needed a new poll. After about 30 seconds of thought, this topic came to mind. I opened a new poll, had up to 8 choices to fill in, and these are what came to mind off the top of my head. Let's just say that I like to keep an eye on who is up to what in the field, but am by no means as avid a rocket news junkie as some people I am familiar with. I later realized I had omitted the ESA but then the thought came that (1) There were no more places available to add it to the poll, (2) There *was* the "Other (specify)" option and (3) I could think of no expressions of human spaceflight interest for the moon by the ESA, so figured it was not that much of a shortcoming. Given the poll has been up for at least 10 days and this is the first mention that I have seen about the ESA, it seems my gut feeling on this was not too far off.
That said, should the ESA express an interest in human spaceflight (HSF) to the Moon (or Mars or anyplace else), I would most heartily be rooting for them! I have waited most patiently for progress on HSF since I watched the Apollo landings on TV and the ensuing activities with Skylab, Mir, Shuttle, ISS, etc. I've also watched with great interest all the unmanned probes that have explored the planets, asteroids, and beyond (Voyagers 1 and 2!)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Friday June 14 2019, @11:22AM (1 child)
Hope the comment wasn't taken as a criticism - it wasn't intended to be one.
I just thought it was interesting that China is seen as such a strong contender. I am interested by the comparison between Britain at the turn of the 19th-20th century and US at the turn of the 20th-21st century; there seemed to be a similar "empire is doomed and Germany is rising" sort of attitude in Britain 100 years ago which, it seems to me, became a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. Britain seems to have just sort of wandered into WW1 with lots of hand wringing and worrying but no actual plan, either military or political, tactical or strategic. Let's hope US does not follow suit.
So as I say, it is interesting to see the poll results, and I don't know whether the result is technological or sociological.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday June 14 2019, @03:35PM
No offense taken. I appreciate your providing me a way to voice something that had come to me, later, and the fact that you were wondering about it suggested to me that you might not be the only one... so why not set the record straight?
That is an interesting analogy to the history of England and Germany... nicely expressed!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday June 15 2019, @04:16AM (1 child)
New ESA Head Wörner: 'We Could Build All Kinds of Things with Moon Concrete' [soylentnews.org]
ESA Expert Envisions "Moon Village" by 2030-2050 [soylentnews.org]
ESA Plans to Send Mining Equipment to the Moon [soylentnews.org]
ESA is bothering, just not in the 2020s.
And that's the right play for them. Why bother with a prestige backpat within the coming decade when you can wait until fully reusable rockets are a thing? Meaning contracting with SpaceX to use Starship, or funding Arianespace to produce such a rocket. If Starship works as intended, the writing is on the wall. Build fully reusable rockets, and you cut costs by at least an order of magnitude. Suddenly you can have your own space station or Moon base even before factoring in cash from international partners. Relevant technologies will have matured by then too. The ISS design was pretty much locked in by the 1990s. Inflatable modules were not a thing back then.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 20 2019, @01:56AM
The poll did say Century tho and not Decade. That said ESA is probably not going to do it by themselves but with someone else, most likely NASA.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday June 13 2019, @04:26PM (1 child)
Doesn't everybody know Bowie Base One [wikipedia.org] will host the first humans on Mars until The Flood comes along?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @04:54PM
That's Mars. But on the moon, they already put [fandom.com] a human [fandom.com] in 2010.
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Friday June 14 2019, @06:39PM (3 children)
What's the point of putting any humans on the moon?
Humans are fragile and not adapted to space.
Send robots instead.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Saturday June 15 2019, @04:23AM
We are putting robots there:
NASA Selects Three Companies to Land Science Payloads on the Moon [soylentnews.org]
I think you can credibly argue that humans with some tools can get a lot more done in a shorter period of time at that location than robots can, for now. And despite being "fragile", putting humans on the Moon and bringing them back alive is a solved problem.
It is expensive to send humans to the Moon, but those costs will come down, to the point where people without government backing can go there. Then you can see costs of govt missions go down since the Beltway bandit cost-plus price will no longer be the only price.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 21 2019, @11:00PM
What's the point of putting humans on your mom?
Humans are fragile and not adapted to her face.
Use vibrators instead.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 24 2019, @05:57PM
gee, thanks.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @05:13PM (1 child)
Kim Fat Sung will be the first sent to the moon via the nukes dropped on NK.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:12PM
Didn't he create the 2nd brother of the android Data? Big Data?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday June 20 2019, @02:43AM
Actually they already did it
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 23 2019, @09:29PM
Seriously, though, given the apathy we've since the last visit, limiting the question to this century seems optimistic. We need a Harriman to drive things since governments seem more concerned about their short terms in power than making any progress for humanity.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Monday June 24 2019, @07:23PM (2 children)
Not that I think ESA will be the first, but I'm surprised you put blue Origin, SpaceX, Japan or India instead of ESA that is more advanced or at least has completed much more missions.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday June 28 2019, @12:13AM
Japan Planning to Put a Man on the Moon Around 2030 [soylentnews.org]
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 28 2019, @01:45AM
ESA had the incredible vision to balk at the idea of renewable rockets to bring down the cost of spaceflight, and then complained when Musk made it work that it was because they didn't have enough funding. Seems real on top of the ball to me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 29 2019, @02:12PM
I expect Klingons to put humans there before humans do it.
I also expect to be dead before it happens (because I am old, not because I am holding my breath).
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:11PM
D.D. Harriman.
Or S.I. Hadden.
This sig for rent.