I’ve been busy for the past couple days, and will continue to be, with first the Space Settlement Summit, and starting today (and concluding tomorrow) a meeting of the Moon Village Association. For those who want to participate, the latter will supposedly start to be live streamed at 8 AM PDT, but I don’t know the URL. I’ll update when I get there and find out what it is.
[Update after conference start]
Here is the livestream. Scott Pace is speaking.
Pacific Daylight Time? Today??
No, it’s standard time.
I found Scott Pace’s talk discouraging and encouraging.
I agree we don’t know, that space needs to explored, but I didn’t like the slow pace of it and the international aspect of exploring- sort of like the Iraq war was an international effort.
I think we should explore the Moon, fast.
I see no value in dragging other countries into exploring the Moon as needed element.
I think we should explore the Moon to determine if going to the Moon is direction that the US and other countries should focus on.
I think it could be a waste of time and resources to explore the Moon- it’s a possibility.
One go to some mountain to look for gold, and find there is no gold to mine.
So, I think NASA to explore the Moon to determine if there is minable water- and find some locations which could be minable.
If find there is not minable lunar water, then you know not to go to the Moon.
Now, not going to the moon, could be that going to the Moon some time in the future is possible. Or it could be NASA decides it’s not minable and others disagrees, or NASA claims it’s minable and others decide it’s not.
Whether the moon is minable is not easy to quantify- there is a lot parts involved with it. But you need data to determine whether it’s worth the risk. Any activity/business has risks, and whole purpose of exploration is to reduce the risk.
Or getting a bunch of countries involved is assuming the Moon has minable water, or getting bunch fools to go on adventure.
I think the Moon has minable water- but I don’t know it does, nor do I know where on Moon is best [or better] place to mine lunar water.
My bias is at one time, I thought going to the Moon was a dumb idea, but changed my mind once water was detected on the Moon.
Then I changed my mind, and thought exploring the Moon should be top priority. Or this is something which be explored immediately- and it wasn’t- and far as I can tell, still isn’t.
Now if the Moon has minable water, it makes more sense to me to also explore Mars. I wasn’t much of Mars fan, either.
Generally speaking if we explore the Moon and don’t find minable lunar water, I am less happy with idea of exploring Mars.
Personally, if the Moon doesn’t have minable water, I would think one should find some other place in space which does have minable water.
A problem with this idea, is we could explore the Moon, and come to conclusion there is not minable lunar water, but be wrong. Or someone might figure out how to mine lunar water which is supposedly not minable.
And there always the unexpected discoveries associated with any exploration of anything. Or if American found no minable lunar water, and someone want to prove them wrong- and/or negative result can lead to looking for other possibilities.
So I think NASA to quickly explore the Moon, and then without delay, then explore Mars.
And how does this work if trying drag bunch countries with you?