Comment by TheRealPomax
Comment by TheRealPomax 2 months ago
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.