Bob Zubrin {?!) and Homer Hickam say we have the technology; let’s do it.
Update a while later]
Dennis Wingo: The elephant and the moon. (Not new, but first time I’d seen it.)
23 thoughts on “A Lunar Colony”
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Bob Zubrin {?!) and Homer Hickam say we have the technology; let’s do it.
Update a while later]
Dennis Wingo: The elephant and the moon. (Not new, but first time I’d seen it.)
Comments are closed.
Who is the “us” hiding in the contraction “let’s”?
This is just another in a very long line of “I want others to finance my fantasy” proposals. One of the reasons Musk resonates so well is that he has moved beyond that for the most part.
“Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.”
Refresh my memory – when did “we” choose to colonize the moon?
“The essence of the modern state is the union of the universal with the full freedom of the particular, and with the welfare of individuals.” – G.W.F. Hegel
I think their point is that if we’re going to spend taxpayer money to go to the moon, let’s go to the moon.
They’re advocating going for beyond merely going to the moon.
Sure. But NASA wouldn’t necessarily have to buy into all the later developments.
The point is, if we’re going to spend a few billion per year on theoretically doing something in cislunar space, we’d be far better off doing it on the Moon itself. What future Congresses and Administrations decide to do with it after that is something that can be decided later.
The point is, if we’re going to spend a few billion per year on theoretically doing something in cislunar space, we’d be far better off doing it on the Moon itself.
The two are not mutually exclusive and it should be considered that they both feed off each other.
The same companies that would do stuff on the Moon would also do stuff in cislunar space. With more nodes, there is a greater chance for more economic activity. Since much of the initial stuff is government driven, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if these companies had the government as a customer at more than one location. This would enable them to further their commercial endeavors.
The big problem, no matter the location, is that government is going to limit and meddle in whatever commerce takes place. An international lunar village is going to be quite the regulatory environment to navigate when many of our partners don’t even believe in commerce.
Sure. But NASA wouldn’t necessarily have to buy into all the later developments.
But the “later developments” is essentially their proposal.
This isn’t simply another “the gateway is a waste of time and money; let’s go to the surface right away” editorial. If it was I wouldn’t have any problem with it. Zubrin and Hickam are going way beyond that.
The combined IQ of most the readers comments couldn’t break the freezing point of water.
Bezos needs a smarter readership.
And the left wonders why we call them NPC’s. The whole series of comments are so predictable, they could have been bot-generated.
I think I lost 20 IQ points just reading first few dozen comments.
Yes. And they probably vote too. Ugh.
“Bezos needs a smarter readership.”
The overwhelming majority of readers don’t comment, so I don’t see how you can judge them based on the comments. (The readership of the Washington Post is estimated at over 80 million. )
I’m curious where that figure of 80 million comes from. The Post’s ciculation is less than one percent of that. Is someone assuming each copy of the Post is passed on to a hundred non-paying readers (science fiction magazines used to try to pull that one)? Do we assume every “hit” on a Post website page is a unique “reader” (SF websites are still trying to pull that scam)? Maybe its perused by 79 million philosophical zombies (that would account for things that “die in darkness”)?
We should cancel Gateway and go directly to a surface base? Bah. I see a lot of energy expended aiming at the wrong target.
The problem with NASA lunar plans isn’t Gateway, the problem is SLS. Yet not one word of criticism of SLS is found in the editorial.
NASA won’t have the spare money to go anywhere, lunar surface or otherwise, as long as the SLS is sucking up NASA resources.
In terms of NASA resources, Gateway is a mouse compared to the ISS elephant. But it’s amazing how many critics of Gateway there are who turn right around and reflexively support flying the ISS forever.
The Zubrin proposal for a flyweight reusable Lunar Excursion Vehicle just substitutes EOR for LPR. Honestly, Lagrange Point Rendezvous at Gateway seems a lot more sensible for a reusable manned lunar lander.
Zubrin has been quite critical of SLS for some time now.
I suspect he threw in that line to get Homer’s full buy-in; though perhaps he also senses that perhaps the time is not yet ripe for a frontal assault on the Senate Launch System.
Needless to say, I agree with you on the need to terminate SLS as soon as possible, and shift the funds to mission hardware making aggressive use of commercial capabilities.
You are referring to SLS as the proper thing to target, and I agree that is the main flaw with Gateway, but a huge problem with the linked proposal is that there is no prospecting, just send people. Maybe they want the humans to do all the prospecting but I suspect that it would mean additional infrastructure that is abandoned on the lunar surface after each mission. At some point, this could be the thing to do but there should be considerable robotic prospecting and winnowing of landing and base sites prior to humans getting involved on the lunar surface.
If NASA had proposed this, Zubrin would complain they are hauling around all this weight they don’t need to.
It is all a stupid and pointless argument to get into. The pace of innovation will soon render both Gateway and whatever Zubrin’s flavor of the month is obsolete. SpaceX will allow for radically different approaches to lunar activities. But what needs to be done in the meantime is a serious effort to do detailed prospecting. This is the other track NASA is working on and it doesn’t rely on SLS or Gateway.
Something like Gateway (but not necessarily Gateway) would be incredibly useful in using telerobitics within the cognitive horizon. This would speed up the prospecting so that when SpaceX has their BFR/BFS (or whatever they are called now) ready, there would be specific places for them to go.
Deorbiting the ISS at end-of-life is an unsolved problem. It can’t take much acceleration, which is why orbit-boosting, station-keeping, and the occasional plane change are all done using the Progress’s tiny propulsion system. One thing everyone agrees on is that the debris footprint will be ~12,000 km long, and hundreds wide. And it’s 8 times heavier than any other object people have put into orbit.
So why not take ISS to the moon, and make it the Gateway? Scab a lot of extra solar panels on it, along with some big Hall Effect thrusters, then let it spiral out without a crew. Ease it into whatever Lunar orbit is best, and use it for…whatever. It’s already built. We have nothing to lose except the risk of casualties from deorbiting it from LEO – a risk it would not have in Lunar LEO.
Just a thought.
Some reasons:
1) The hardware is getting old;
2) The hardware has little protection against the higher radiation environment outside the Van Allen Belts.
3) You would need a heck of a lot of delta-v to move a payload that big that far.
I see no reason that lunar base will lower the cost of lunar water or lunar rocket fuel.
I think NASA should explore lunar polar region- both with robotic and crewed missions to find lunar water.
Then NASA should explore Mars. Not with purpose of finding alien life or if Mars had life billions of years ago, but rather to determine if Mars settlements are viable/possible and where would be a best places to put a town. Then NASA is finished exploring the Moon and Mars. NASA at this point of course could then do further exploration of Moon and Mars and/or elsewhere.
Maybe viability of having settlements on Mars could related to whether alien life is on Mars. Maybe finding and studying Mars life is for some reason needed. Maybe 1/2 way thru Mars exploration program, it’s decided a lunar base is needed for some reason and is funded.
But I see little value to lunar base unless there is mineable lunar water. And if there is lunar water mined at south pole and not at north pole, and already having lunar base at north polar region, it seems one should abandon that base and get new base at south pole.
Putting a lunar base somewhere seems to limit options rather expanding them
I don’t know why these things keep coming up. If Musk succeeds with BFR, everything else is obsolete. Zubrin has spent his life on these things, and I’m sure doesn’t want to give it up, any more than Aldrin wants to give up cyclers, but their time came and went. And if Musk fails? Someone else will do it, probably Bezos. History is moving on right now. The only useful thing NASA can do is use the Gateway funds to build a working example of NautilusX and see if it can be used for human outer solar system exploration. A century from now, if we’re lucky, things that look like NautilusX, but much, much larger, will ply the solar system carrying thousands of passengers, and things that look like the BFS “Starship” design will act as cargo and passenger landers (like the ships boats of the 18th century).
I should have scrolled down further. This is exactly right.
A NautilusX type of craft is critically needed for researching the gravity prescription and in allowing humans to go where ever they want in the solar system.
In order for SpaceX to get a high number of reuses for their BFS and amortize their costs, they need an in-space transport craft so the BFS just goes up and down delivering passengers. The number of people that can travel to Mars in a launch season dramatically goes up with an in-space transport and a small number of BFS.
Just because Zubrin doesn’t like the purpose of Gateway doesn’t mean that Gateway doesn’t have a purpose. The sensationalism and the dishonesty detracts from what could be a compelling argument comparing the two different ideas. It is an unethical way to frame the discussion and Zubrin is capable of better. If he thinks there is advantage to frame things this way because the audience is largely ignorant of the topic, he is just another symptom of the self proclaimed elite with zero respect or understanding of other people.
Most people may not be interested in space or NASA but if you treat them like adults who are capable of thought (treat them with respect) they are not only open to being persuaded but are actually capable of understanding the situation and drawing their own conclusions.