Comment by TheRealPomax 2 months ago
But is there any scientific value? We ran enough missions that we're still looking at everything we brought back last time, what science would we be doing that we either haven't already done, or can do here on earth just fine without going to the moon for it?
Yeah but the Earth is a geologically active planet hosting life. The moon is neither of those things, it's a ball of rock in orbit that we can explore all of "several square feet at a time", so once you've done that a few times: what's left to do? Realistically?
Sure: if we had the ability to actually send a proper mission that can drive around the entire thing, with a pop up lab (arctic research style) on the moon itself, that's a different matter, but we are nowhere near that level of proficient at space science yet, and going to the moon a few more times won't make a difference to that aspect.
Arctic style base on the moon would be 200 to 500 metric tons of materials to ship. That's 2-5 SpaceX Starship return trips if/when they become operational in a few years time.
There's a number of reservations wrt the practicality of SpaceX Starship of course. That said, it allows us to say there's at least one company projecting a 100 metric ton payload spacecraft in the near future (with prototypes already being tested).
If/when they get it working, remember that SpaceX tends to mass produce their spacecraft, so it wouldn't be just a one off single landing by a one off single lander.
No, it's 5 return trips just to get the materials there. That's like... the least problematic part of assembling and running an arctic style base. Especially given that the Arctic has quite a lot of water and oxygen available. And it takes less than a day to send a rescue mission over. The moon has none of that.
We have no idea what's under the surface of the moon. We literally know nothing. It could be that the moon is secretly a gold mine of rocket propellant 5 meters under the surface, but we simply never looked deep enough.
We built the first railways on earth 200 years ago. We could build railways on the moon this century. Think about this. The time between the beginning of industrialization and a space civilization could be just 300 years.
Your grand kids would experience the space age, but only if you start working on it today.
Well, the Moon is an entire world.
We're still doing science on the planet Earth, because there's still plenty to learn, and we actually live here with billions of people.
We've only sent a handful of folks to the Moon so far. We've literally barely scratched the surface, and only a few tiny patches of it as that.
Exploring new places has always lead to all sorts of interesting new discoveries. No reason to think a whole new world mightn't hold a few interesting (and/or potentially lucrative) surprises.