**** the Moon! We're going to Mars!

waaaaa waaaaaa want a mars base play set ;( ;( ;(

SPACE

ELEVATOR

Everything else would follow.
 
Edit: Haven't we all looked at the stars once in your life and thought, wow, I want to see them all? I mean, we didn't explore the artic nor Antartica just for commercial and military purposes. We had this drive, this hunger to know, to see for ourselves, what is really out there? Our whole point in life was to unravel the mysteries that our environement, our planet, our universe offers us at every turn! Why are we content with being what we are now, when we could seek new things, new worlds to see and fulfill our desire for knowledge, for a new sustenance in the stars that we see above? Must we be so content and so tied up by the mundane things in life, and our own Earthly problems, that we fail to see that this is our destiny, the Manifest Destiny of all Man to conquer all that is to be seen, without hindrance nor doubt, to go out into space for the glory of man until we have satisfied our eternal thirst to know?

Step by step, we need to do this.

EDIT: Oh shit, I made a new post instead of editing.
 
No Limit said:
Why would you guys seriously want to have a base on the moon? Aside for "hey man, thats so cool, we have a base on the moon"? Is bragging rights really worth what would probably amount to decades of work, a number of lives lost, and a cost that will amount to trillions of dollars? What would make our investment worth it? They don't have any real natural resources (despite what hl2.net's resident expert unozero says). And I see very little other benefit.
Click to expand...
Practice for when we have to set up colonies on useful, distant planets.
 
No Limit said:
Why would you guys seriously want to have a base on the moon? Aside for "hey man, thats so cool, we have a base on the moon"? Is bragging rights really worth what would probably amount to decades of work, a number of lives lost, and a cost that will amount to trillions of dollars? What would make our investment worth it? They don't have any real natural resources (despite what hl2.net's resident expert unozero says). And I see very little other benefit.
Click to expand...

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1283056

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/moon_mining_041110.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/?a=f

Please provide sources stating why helum 3 is not a real natural resource...

Sulkdodds said:
SPACE

ELEVATOR

Everything else would follow.
Click to expand...

This
 
15357 said:
Edit: Haven't we all looked at the stars once in your life and thought, wow, I want to see them all? I mean, we didn't explore the artic nor Antartica just for commercial and military purposes. We had this drive, this hunger to know, to see for ourselves, what is really out there? Our whole point in life was to unravel the mysteries that our environement, our planet, our universe offers us at every turn! Why are we content with being what we are now, when we could seek new things, new worlds to see and fulfill our desire for knowledge, for a new sustenance in the stars that we see above? Must we be so content and so tied up by the mundane things in life, and our own Earthly problems, that we fail to see that this is our destiny, the Manifest Destiny of all Man to conquer all that is to be seen, without hindrance nor doubt, to go out into space for the glory of man until we have satisfied our eternal thirst to know?

Step by step, we need to do this.

EDIT: Oh shit, I made a new post instead of editing.
Click to expand...

I absolutely agree with you. Everything yolu just said can be done with robots. Yes, we can coloinze the moon at an enormous cost. But it would be about as worth while as colonozing the top of mount everest. It might be a cool place to visit, but there ain't shit up there.

Practice for when we have to set up colonies on useful, distant planets.
Click to expand...
We can easily practice here on earth and on the space station. Meanwhile we can invest in robots and telescopes that will actually help us find a planet that would be worth while going to. Ain't shit in this solar system. So until we master light speed travel maned space missions do us no good.
 
Remus said:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/1283056

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/moon_mining_041110.html

http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/19296/?a=f



This
Click to expand...

No offense but I hate it when peopel just post long ass link to a bunch of articles expecting me to read them all. If the argument is that we can go there to get helium-3 then there are many problems with that argument. At this time helium-3 does us aboslutely no good and there is questions about whether or not it will ever do us any good. If it could the other issue would be cost. Having to bring it back here to use as energy would not be competative with other much smarter energy sources. It would be cheaper and more efficient to get helium-3 burried in the earths crust.
 
No Limit said:
Why would you guys seriously want to have a base on the moon? Aside for "hey man, thats so cool, we have a base on the moon"? Is bragging rights really worth what would probably amount to decades of work, a number of lives lost, and a cost that will amount to trillions of dollars? What would make our investment worth it? They don't have any real natural resources (despite what hl2.net's resident expert unozero says). And I see very little other benefit.
Click to expand...

Well, for now the only benefit would be to observe the universe, unimpeded by the atmosphere and magnetic field, at all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Putting devices on the dark side of the moon that exceed hubble in resolution etc. would be very useful.

The moon is kinda like a tall tree for someone to climb who is lost in a forest. Assuming we put some telescopes up there, it makes sense to have people maintaining the equipment (Mainly to avoid having to plan a mission to fix shit like when hubble was first launched and everything was blurry). From there it would just expand and expand...at least I hope it would.
 
Tyguy said:
Well, for now the only benefit would probably be to observe the universe, unimpeded by the atmosphere and magnetic field at all wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum. Putting devices on the dark side of the moon that exceed hubble in resolution etc. would be very useful.

The moon is kinda like a tall tree for someone to climb who is lost in a forest. Assuming we put some telescopes up there, it makes sense to have people maintaining the equipment. From there it would just expand and expand...at least I hope it would.
Click to expand...

But that's what satellites already do. You can lunch a satellite to the dark side of the moon if you want and it's really not that expensive (I assume its already been done).
 
No Limit said:
I absolutely agree with you. Everything yolu just said can be done with robots. Yes, we can coloinze the moon at an enormous cost. But it would be about as worth while as colonozing the top of mount everest. It might be a cool place to visit, but there ain't shit up there.
Click to expand...

My realist, pragmatic part of brain agrees with you. I think that we need evidence that other planets are worthwhile - like finding a new energy source on Mars or something. Something that would make sustainable development of off-world enterprises possible.

We also need to develop ways to break the boundaries that hold us - namely the sheer vastness of space. For now, I suppose near-light speed propulsion should be something to aim for. Another would be to develop something that would let us "travel" without the hindrance of the laws of physics. Of course, I don't see the latter coming in the near future.

But still, it saddens me to think that the explorers will be robots, not real live people who can write memoirs about the absolute exhilaration and the emotions that would flow through you that cannot be uttered in words alone, after going to places where you know that you are the first person to ever set foot there. Armstrong probably knows this.
 
No Limit said:
Ain't shit in this solar system. So until we master light speed travel maned space missions do us no good.
Click to expand...

Well what constitutes 'shit'? I mean there's a ridiculous amount we can learn about each planet in its own right, not to mention the dozens of moons and the still-being-discovered outer solar system. There's just as much to learn here as there is anywhere else in the galaxy considering not every star has orbiting bodies... and even fewer would have 8 significant ones.

Also, relativity won't allow light speed manned (or simply light speed) travel. As you approach the speed of light, your mass increases and so does the energy required to maintain/increase velocity. At the speed of light you become infinitely massive.

Not to mention, by the time someone left to go on a faster than light trip, by the time they reached their destination (assuming it's of any significant distance) the people that sent them on their way could very well be dead... or several generations would have gone by.

The only way we're getting humans out of the solar system in any reasonable capacity is to cryostatis and truck along for a million years or develop a new means of travel that fall outside the boundaries of common physics and three dimensional space... like a warp drive.
 
No Limit said:
If the argument is that we can go there to get helium-3 then there are many problems with that argument. At this time helium-3 does us absolutely no good and there is questions about whether or not it will ever do us any good.
Click to expand...

Key words "at this time". There's no way to know if in a few years they wont make a breakthrough in fusion reactor technology.


No Limit said:
If it could the other issue would be cost. Having to bring it back here to use as energy would not be competitive with other much smarter energy sources.
Click to expand...

Again the space elevator would cut costs dramatically.


However even if Helium 3 is useless and there is nothing else to mine on the Moon there is still the potential to have large fields of solar panels which would collect energy and then beam it back to Earth.

Also high power telescopes on the far side of the Moon.
 
You know what I love about internet message boards? You can geek out on space and nobody looks at you funny.

StarBob said:
Well what constitutes 'shit'? I mean there's a ridiculous amount we can learn about each planet in its own right, not to mention the dozens of moons and the still-being-discovered outer solar system. There's just as much to learn here as there is anywhere else in the galaxy considering not every star has orbiting bodies... and even fewer would have 8 significant ones.

Also, relativity won't allow light speed manned (or simply light speed) travel. As you approach the speed of light, your mass increases and so does the energy required to maintain/increase velocity. At the speed of light you become infinitely massive.

Not to mention, by the time someone left to go on a faster than light trip, by the time they reached their destination (assuming it's of any significant distance) the people that sent them on their way could very well be dead... or several generations would have gone by.

The only way we're getting humans out of the solar system in any reasonable capacity is to cryostatis and truck along for a million years or develop a new means of travel that fall outside the boundaries of common physics and three dimensional space... like a warp drive.
Click to expand...

When I mean there aint shit out there I mean as far as an enviroment we could actually live on. I totally agree with you there are many very interesting things in our own solar system and we need to explore them vigorously, but that exploration needs to be robotic.

And yes, technically we can't travel at the speed of light. But relativity as far as I understand it does allow space to bend. And the fact everyone on your planet would be dead by the time you got to your destination is insignificant to what we are talking about which is colonizing other planets that we can actually live on.

I do not personally believe physics will ever allow us to get far beyond our own solar system, but my opinion doesn't really mean jack shit in that regard since I know very little on the subject.

Key words "at this time". There's no way to know if in a few years they wont make a breakthrough in fusion reactor technology.
Click to expand...
Even if it does the cost of bringing that back can not be ignored. You would be better off mining for it here.

Again the space elevator would cut costs dramatically.


However even if Helium 3 is useless and there is nothing else to mine on the Moon there is still the potential to have large fields of solar panels which would collect energy and then beam it back to Earth.

Also high power telescopes on the far side of the Moon.
Click to expand...
Space elevator seems absolutely insane to me. But have at it. We don't need humans to try and develop a space elevator. And if you factor in the cost of building a huge telescope on the moon you would be much better off using a large array of satellites and would probably get much better results.
 
No Limit said:
I do not personally believe physics will ever allow us to get far beyond our own solar system, but my opinion doesn't really mean jack shit in that regard since I know very little on the subject.


Even if it does the cost of bringing that back can not be ignored. You would be better off mining for it here.


Space elevator seems absolutely insane to me. But have at it. We don't need humans to try and develop a space elevator. And if you factor in the cost of building a huge telescope on the moon you would be much better off using a large array of satellites and would probably get much better results.
Click to expand...

Technology is what doesn't allow us to get beyond our solar system. Well, more appropriately, energy sources. Chemical propulsion can only get you so fast even with the gravity sling shots. Voyager did it by a ridiculous number of trajectory calculations and is the fastest man made thing ever, yet it's taken over 30 years just to get to terminations shock, the point where solar winds start to slow down. Which means it hasn't even really left our solar neighborhood. With enough energy we could generate propulsions that would get us around our own back yard fast enough to make traveling less a physics issue and more a "why do we need to get here" issue. Personally I think human space travel needs to be relegated to our own 'back porch' instead of our 'back yard'. As much attention as a human Mars landing would get, the amount of scientific study that could be done for the same investment in robotics would easy surpass human observations and would be infinitely safer.

However I believe that low earth orbit and potentially moon manned missions are necessary. The moon could potentially be an amazing staging point for launcing future missions more quickly and effectively. Having a naturally geo-synced satellite that apparently already contains water and has a completely stable surface would be a great asset for local colonization. I'm not saying a thousand people, but treat it as a space station.

So in summation, go to the moon, but make it useful. Don't go to Mars or anywhere else with people because it's a waste of money when robots do it better (except sometimes they get stuck).

Also, there's already an array of space sattelites. For some reason people onl talk about Hubble...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_telescopes

Oh and the space elevator is crazy. It's one of those things that's possible, but basically you have to keep everyone everywhere away from it because if a plane hits it, it's gone... if a guy runs up to it with a pair of scissors it's gone (thought I'd imagine the base would have some rigid structure around it.
But then there's this - http://www.xkcd.com/697/
 
No Limit said:
I absolutely agree with you. Everything yolu just said can be done with robots. Yes, we can coloinze the moon at an enormous cost. But it would be about as worth while as colonozing the top of mount everest. It might be a cool place to visit, but there ain't shit up there.
Click to expand...
A self-sustaining moon colony would be insurance against another K-T event in Earth at least. Sure, the odds of it happening aren't high but better to be safe than sorry given the stakes.
 
Eejit said:
A self-sustaining moon colony would be insurance against another K-T event in Earth at least. Sure, the odds of it happening aren't high but better to be safe than sorry given the stakes.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it suck to watch it from the moon though?
 
Eejit said:
A self-sustaining moon colony would be insurance against another K-T event in Earth at least. Sure, the odds of it happening aren't high but better to be safe than sorry given the stakes.
Click to expand...

But I don't think a self-sustaining moon colony is every actually possible. Not enough resources up there to support life. They did find water but only very small amounts of it exist in the polar ice caps.
 
It's really not that hard to create a self-contained sustainable habitat. Where do you think the ISS gets their water? Space? :p All we need to construct for a permanent Moon base is a bodily-excretion refinery for water recyling, some greenhouses for oxygen exchange, a long-lasting power source (fission, fusion, solar, etc), and an airtight building.

To be fair, you'd also need some sort of blast shielding to protect from errant meteor strikes, but I'm sure that could be figured out easily.
 
No Limit said:
Like I said in the post, there is very little water. They found about 24 gallons from that article. Sure, there is more when that came from but exactly how much more isn't clear. But considering the size of the moon and the fact the water is only found in the polar ice caps of the moon it can't be that large. Not enough for a permanent self sustaining colony at least.
Click to expand...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/13/AR2009111301986.html

26 gallons in a 60-100 foot crater. That's a lot of water. Not to mention water recylcing processes have been in place since early in space flight and are practiced with great efficiency in the ISS. Also, there's no evidence that there water is only found at the caps or anywhere else but this impact site... so one can't say with any certainty that there isn't water elsewhere or possibly everyhere under the surface. To me though, it's hard to believe that we just happened upon a spot that's so very dense with water ice. If water ice is in fact in the subsurface frozen, and since the moon doesn't have a high internal temperature and the surface is fairly reflective, in my opinion it seems ice could be maintained underground throughout the moon.

That's just me though.

Water is the primary resource for survivability in space. With it and proper energy, it would be possible to supplement the diet and oxygen abilities of the individuals staying there with plant life. Energy is one thing that could be in abundance considering solar panels would be as effective as they are in orbit and would be able to take up as much space as they'd need... so that would never really be an issue.

With this near unlimited energy, extracting frozen water from the subsurface wouldn't be too difficult if it is in abundance.

So if water is a prominent as I hypothesize (even if it's just at the poles in the quantities mentioned) it wouldn't be any more difficult to set up research facilities and similar structures on the moon than it would be to do so in orbiting space. In fact, it has the potential to be a simpler affair considering that not everything would need to be shipped from Earth.
 
Stigmata said:
To be fair, you'd also need some sort of blast shielding to protect from errant meteor strikes, but I'm sure that could be figured out easily.
Click to expand...

Meteor strikes on the earth-facing side of the moon are less common than even on the surface of the earth. Granted theres no atmosphere to slow and stop them... but the guys in the ISS are at more of a risk than people would be on the moon. It would be a bad thing if it did happen though.
 
Escaep said:
Good answer....

People and attitudes like yours are why our species is destined to fail.
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I think its people like you that are the problem. You let your stupid pussified emoitions get in the way of rational thinking.

For how long you've been here for at this point you should know that if you are going to make a claim have a reason behind doing so. What do the feelings of some astronaut have to do with anything?

StarBob, fair enough. So lets send some robots up there and find out. If there is truly enough water up there to keep up a self suficient colony I'll rething my position.
 
Although I do favor our presence on the moon, our understanding of the universe on a quantum and cosmic scale is more important than simply being there. That doesn't mean I don't think a mars mission is futile. I'd love to watch someone step on the surface and live in a world where man has walked on more than 1 planet. But to be honest, it's more important to make discoveries that further our knowledge of why things work the way they do.
 
No Limit: I genuinely hate your opinion. You have no sense of wonder and awe.
 
I don't give a damn if it's more efficient scientifically or economically to cut out the human element.

No Limit, you will be watching online with your robot's sensors whilst I am boning the space chicks.
 
Why do we need manned spaceflight when robots can do it just fine too? Well, let me refer to the Kennedy quote on the last page:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
Click to expand...

We need manned spaceflight because it's hard. Manned spaceflight forces us to innovate and invent new technologies. We already know how to get robots to Mars.
 
PvtRyan said:
Why do we need manned spaceflight when robots can do it just fine too? Well, let me refer to the Kennedy quote on the last page:



We need manned spaceflight because it's hard. Manned spaceflight forces us to innovate and invent new technologies. We already know how to get robots to Mars.
Click to expand...

"The power of space is to raise our aspirations to those things that are possible, if we will commit!"
-Eugene Krantz
 
I'm pretty sure when the great imaginary god said, 'go forth and multiply' he also said, 'go forth and multiply on Mars too you dimwits! Jesus Christ I have to do everything around here.."
 
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