2018 Moon Launch? 104 Billion. Wow!!, page 2

Originally posted by timski

Originally posted by Frosty
So say if we have a base on the moon, now what? We have people, probably a half dozen, living on the moon at a cost of billions per year for what?

Because it is mankind's inherant curiosity to see what's round the next corner...

The cost for any project in a wholly new scientific field has always been expensive...the cost (in today's terms) for Magellan's global circumnavigation fleet would have been similarly vastly expensive to the Portugese...they could have equally said "sail round the world....for what??"

...but they did anyway!

We already know what's on the moon, that is the only problem with this arguement. We can send probes and rovers to discover at a much cheaper cost what men could do.

This isn't even new, we went to the moon 36 years ago.

If Magellan and the Portugese were able to send out unmanned boats at a much cheaper cost they most certainly would have done this.

Setting up a base on the moon is a stationary tactic, not exploritary.

Originally posted by ShadowXIX

Originally posted by Frosty

So say if we have a base on the moon, now what? We have people, probably a half dozen, living on the moon at a cost of billions per year for what?

Well besides He3 which we all know your against for whatever reason. There are many other benefits to a lunar base. A lunar base would have access to the materials and resources of the Moon. Metals can be extracted from the lunar soil. More importantly, significant deposits of water have recently been found on the Moon. NASA's Clementine Lunar Explorer found between 110 million to 1.1 billion tons of water ice at the lunar poles.

Thats water could be used to sustain thousands of people for several centuries without recycling. Or even better that water could be turned into Rocket fuel.

The Moon could then be turned into a "gas station" for future missions to the outer planets. Having fuel and water already up in space could vastly lower the cost of a mission since you have a much lower launch weight when leaving earth.

The Moon would also provide a stable platform on which to build any structures. In space, everything must be done in zero gravity under perilous conditions. On the surface, engineers can dig foundations for added support, and could work in relative safety. Buildings on the surface can also be expanded very easily, allowing room for future growth.

Then there is always the benefits we cant predict yet as we learn more about the moon. We have found out alot about the moon since we landed (water) chances are theres much more we dont know.

I am not against helium-3, I just can't see the fascination with it as there are no current fusion reactors using helium-3! Besides in my above post I made mention that there are oodles of this stuff in our oceans and if we can find an economical process to decay tritium in or out of a fusion reactor we will have the helium-3 we need. But what's the point when there aren't any He-3 reactors? I at least can't find any links saying there are any.

We can use water here on earth and make our own rocket propellants here on earth, we don't need to go to the moon to do this. There are also other forms of space propulsion that could potential put this trillion dollar project out of business such as nuclear, laser, plasma or microwave.