space shuttle columbia crash

We don't have bases on the Moon yet because we lost interest in the Moon in the 1970s, not because of any insurmountable technical issue. Nobody ever said we would need to land a shuttle on the Moon to establish a base; a good ole-fashioned Apollo-style lander would be all right in my book. Certainly the whole endeavor would take a good deal of time and effort, but it's quite doable given the current state of our technology, and would certainly be more than worth our while in the long run, blah blah blah.

Welcome to the forum! :grin:

 

They don't use the apollo rockets because they waste resources and they have very little cargo room.

And thanks for the welcome

 

The rocket was called Saturn. The spacecraft (capsule and lander) was called Apollo. I wasn't advocating a return to Saturn-era technology, I merely stated that an Apollo-style lander would be able to land on the Moon and deliver resources for a base in a way that a shuttle could not: the shuttle being, as you more or less pointed out, a glider which would have some trouble landing smoothly on the Moon without a prefabricated runway.

They could also use inexpensive, unmanned spacecraft to dump supplies on the Moon prior to the arrival of humans, to speed any construction that may be needed. They were talking about doing that with Mars a while back, when everyone was going ga-ga over Rover and getting all excited about a potential Mars colony. But that's a different topic altogether.

 

That sounds good, but there's still the problem of lack of oxygen and muscle fatigue. Gravity is still kind of a mystery to scientists, though I think they have theories about rotation. If they increased gravity somehow it would probably solve the muscle fatigue thing, and also make the atmosphere thicker and thus protecting better from radiation.

There were ideas being thrown about that had to do with fixing the atmosphere to our standards on mars, though it would take thousands of years.

 

xento, even if there WAS a base on the moon, you still need to fly the fuel out to use it up there. That's like buying a full tank of petrol to drive as far as you can to deliver a 5 litre can of it - expensive and stupid.

 

This is why we should go to Mars instead. Going to the moon is a waste of fuel cuz there is nothing of interest there, except for helium 3 which we could maybe use in fusion reactors someday, in like a hundred years.

Mars is new, has an atmosphere, and can support plantlife with only a little support from a greenhouse and a little oxygen. The ground is mineral-rich, except for nitrogen, which could be brought, and maybe water, which could be produced out of the air and with hydrogen brought along. In the same process, one from the 18th Century, a fuel can be made out of carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Only disadvantages are the time, 6 months there, 6 months back, potential radiation risks, on the journey, but likely not that bad, and the fact that despite the mineral rich dirt, there is also a reactive compound which destroys biological matter. If these small things could be ironed out, we could do it now.

If any of this interests you read Robert Zubrin's The Case For Mars. It's a cool book.

 

It's also largely unexplored, the only probes that were to land on Mars were lost before they ever landed

 

This is only half true. While Mars is indeed largely unexplored, it is not true that all of our Mars probes were lost prior to landing. The Mars Pathfinder comes to mind... mostly because I've got a poster of it above my computer, but still.

Misc. thoughts: The Moon is not always half bright/hot and half dark/cold, as someone (Xento?) suggested. It has a day and night cycle, the lunar night lasting 14 Earth days. Muscle atrophy is no more of an issue on the Moon than it is for those poor people stuck in space stations for months and months everlasting. (I know, still a big issue, and not one I'd personally go in for, but nevertheless it's one we've already dealt with.) And honestly, this is the first time I've heard someone say going to the Moon would be a waste "cuz" there's nothing of interest there. I feel like I'm back in junior high....

Nobody (except maybe the corporate loons at the Artemis Project) are suggesting a literal colony on the Moon: most respected scientists like Edward Teller advocate a lunar base to provide a stable and quiet platform for astronomy and space physics, for material resources which can be used in near-Earth space or on the Moon itself, as a convenient, economical, and (relatively) low-risk launchpad and refueling station for interplanetary travel, and as a research facility on lunar history and geology, about which there is still much to be learned.

Of course the whole project would be expensive, but not nearly as much as going to Mars (Why go to Mars now? Because it's "new"?), and the rewards will be great. I'm not saying we should never go to Mars, merely that we should do it after establishing a lunar base.

Oh, good collection of presentations at a symposium on lunar bases and exploration here:

http://ads.harvard.edu/books/lbsa/toc.html

 

I have no idea whether going to Mars is a plausible idea or not. To me, it always seemed implausible. However, I am not in the mood to become a google expert. I doubt, however, that we have the technology to put humans Mars. Saying that the only disadvantages are time and potential radiation risks is not true. While in space, people lose bone mass, which could lead to unpleasant stuff back on earth. To my knowledge, this happens pretty quickly.

 

Too true. This is why you never see astronauts walking around immediately upon their return to Earth, no matter how short the trip. I sat through a lecture at JPL (I live nearby, and they often have public lectures and "open house" fairs) on this topic some years ago, and while I don't remember all the gory details, I do remember the general point that space travel does horrible, horrible things to the human body. If I had had any personal aspirations to space travel, they were definitely gone by the end of the lecture.

 

Heh, not to mention those tubes up your arse. Space travel DOES NOT look like it does in Star Trek.

 

the "cuz" is just because this is casual and quick, don't make a big deal out of it.

I did forget to mention the advantages for astronomy found on the moon. This is a valid point, but there still remains little of real interest on the moon, hence the reason we haven't continued to go there, as well as the inefficiency of hte moon as an inbetween base(it would make more sense just to leave from Earth orbit, once you fire your controlled burn, you don't do much else. Leaving from the moon would just break up the journey into more stops.)

The Viking landers, I and II, landed in the 70's on Mars and made important discoveries on Mars. The Pathfinder was the first lander to also carry a ROVER.

 

Actually, the moon has a lot of potential as a launch platform. Not only is it easily buildable on using geodesic biodomes but it has only 1/10 of the gravity of earth and a readily available source of fuel.

I read up on this a while back. There are millions of tons of ice on the moon. In craters on the poles, where the sun cannot get over the rim of the crater, there is so much ice that we can use it not only for producing atmospheres for the biodomes for more than 100 years to come but in addition we can launch dozens of rockets by splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen (which is the fuel used in the rockets - they don't use fossil fuels).

It is a process that is used quite commonly on Earth and all it needs is a refinery to produce those essential gases. The temperature on the moon is low enough to keep them stable and in solid form under fairly easy conditions and it doesn't get that hot even in the sunlight if the area is insulated. It's only because there is a very thin atmosphere that the sun has such an effect and shielding things from the sun is not a problem using reflective materials.

However, unlike Mars, the Moon can never be terraformed (unless we find out how to create artificial gravity wells) because it's mass is not large enough to keep anything heavier than helium in a permanent atmosphere. Everything else just gradually evaporates into space.

Biodomes that are suitable for use on the moon have been around for about 5 years now. Several of them have been built in Britain and most of them have been funded and/or built by British-based organisations (although we are by no means the only ones).

The most successful one so far was a British one that managed to stay working for 2 whole years before the experiment was officially ended.

You mention the value of interest in colonising the moon or Mars. The truth is, apart from a launch platform, colonisation or scientific research, there is little of value from either body. Mars doesn't have much in the way of resources except for strip mining or colonisation and terraforming will take about 80 years I think, at last estimate.

The moon would be an intermediate step. It's probable that both will be colonised in the fairly near future (100 years or so) because the moon, as I have said, is an ideal platform for lauching space-bound missions - including those to terraform Mars. Resources taken from the moon would be incomparably cheaper to colect and send to Mars than it would be to take them from Earth. In the long run, it would be so much cheaper to colonise the moon as an initial step that I don't think colonising Mars first would stand a chance if anyone with any mathematical sense at all has anything to say about it.

 

Well, it depends on who you ask about the efficiency and worth of the moon. My source, Robert Zubrin, doesn't think the moon is worth it, yet. However, many others, including the Planetary Society and the Space Society, disagree. I'm not totally sure, but i still think Mars has a lot more use and potential, and could be reached now.