The last time a human stepped on the moon was 1972. Why?

reply to post by Phage

Agreed and i'm 100% for it. Still I'd like to raise the stakes some - more money and bigger objectives say one billion dollars for the first company to establish a sustainable moonbase. You see how these 'reality' TV shows have become so popular? Can you imagine what the sponsors would pay for a reality show from Moonbase Alpha? The Capitalism of today is backed more by dreams than anything else - And big money can be made selling the Moon to the world even if the ground it is composed of is no more valuable than that dusty desert town where they built Las Vegas.

Why do we have to send a man to the Moon? Why not just develop our rover technology somewhere which is easier to get to and easier to get back from?

If sending men to the Moon is expensive, then send robots.
If there is no TV in going to the Moon, then why are we sending robots to Mars?

It takes a few days to get to the Moon. If anything happened to our astronauts, then it would be nice to have some chance of arriving before they died.

Really, there are 101 reasons to develop our skills on the Moon rather than on Mars, but I think it is all about the aliens - who are the most powerful and which ones can we bully into submission. On Mars they are not that well equipped perhaps?

No, I cannot see any logical reason why we dont send robots to the Moon.

reply to post by qmantoo

We sent men to the moon to plant a flag on it indicating ownership of it.

Once technological advances are made to exploit it for anything of value, that's what will happen.

Some things just never change....

SheopleNation

supermarket2012
Yes everybody it is quite true! Only a "foolish mortal" would DARE to think ANY differently than what this poster proposes!!! You foolish mortals and your logic. ALL OF YOU, DIRTY, DIRTY MORTALS!

Oh I am sorry, are you disgruntled? Does my difference of opinion bother you? Better get acclimated to it around here my friend.

supermarket2012
Or, perhaps it was really all about us competing with the Soviet Union, although that doesn't make sense....because the cold war didn't end till much later.

Actually it makes perfect sense. What doesn't, is how the Cold War ending much later has anything whatsoever to do with competing with the Soviets back in 1969. Feel free to explain if you like. ~$heopleNation

edit on 9-10-2013 by SheopleNation because: TypO

Disgruntled? Give me a break, lol. Sorry if I struck a nerve, I wasn't trying to.

qmantoo
I cannot see any logical reason why we dont send robots to the Moon.

We do, but they are orbiters, not rovers or landers. A rover, arguably, can achieve more than an orbiter, but it seems like scientists are content with the research made available with orbiters and lunar rocks brought by the Apollo missions. From orbit, you can still examine mineral composition, geology and morphology, etc. NASA have had a string of successful and valuable orbiter missions, with the current one aiming to study the Moon's tenuous atmosphere and dust, before it gets disturbed by the future manned exploration and colonisation.

China are getting ready to launch their lunar rover soon: en.wikipedia.org...
Russia and India will follow. en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by kykweer


Not really if you think about it. The earth is consistently being observed from satellites, and various other forms of surveillance where as the moon isn't more of a surprise to come from above while everyone is watching below. This was the thought and arguments from a research group working with DARPA or the likes, during the STAR WARS programs. It has been a while since I read it, however it was an interesting article.

Grim

wildespace
We do, but they are orbiters, not rovers or landers. A rover, arguably, can achieve more than an orbiter, but it seems like scientists are content with the research made available with orbiters and lunar rocks brought by the Apollo missions.

Well my friend, I think that them being "content" is completely foolish. Just because we covered a very small area through 6 Lunar landing missions from 1969 - 1972, in no way whatsoever does that validate that after 40 years NASA has been reluctant to go back and land on the Moon once again. We need to return and start digging, there could be fossils up there which could answer a lot of our questions regarding the Moon's origins. ~$heopleNation

Well, Ingo Swann had some opinions on that, which were well described in his book Penetration, that I am reading right now. Rather interesting!

SheopleNation
We need to return and start digging, there could be fossils up there

First, we need scientifically valid arguments that life could have existed on the Moon, or that it was at least remotely habitable. That's why there are rovers on Mars, studying the past habitability and, with the upcoming rover, searching for signs of past life - because we have good reasons to believe that Mars was habitable in the past. No such reasons for the Moon, it is and always been to all intents and purposes lifeless.

We gained a whole lot of information about the Moon from the orbiters, as I mentioned above. It would be foolish to ignore that, and claim that only by landing humans or rovers can we achieve anything useful.

wildespace

We gained a whole lot of information about the Moon from the orbiters, as I mentioned above. It would be foolish to ignore that, and claim that only by landing humans or rovers can we achieve anything useful.

All of that is true, but it neglects the essentially human aspect of our experience - the need to ask, and have answered, the question "what was it like?". We can all watch pictures of holiday destinations and the wonders of the world on TV, but it just isn't the same as being there. Data collection is massively useful, but it lacks emotional fulfillment.

Mankind has never left the surface of the planet Earth. All space probes and manned activity are filmed at a studio in Houston. Humans cannot travel in space and we should stop wasting so much money on trying to get there. We are an extinct species that should just enjoy what time we have left. We should spend all that space program money on keggers and free cell phones, because people deserve that kind of stuff because the Lord God Obama says so!

reply to post by CarbonBase


Why can't humans or space probes travel in space?

wildespace
First, we need scientifically valid arguments that life could have existed on the Moon, or that it was at least remotely habitable.

How can an argument be deemed valid if nobody has ever even bothered to dig deeper than a few feet there? They have only dug in a dozen or so different areas through 6 lunar landing missions. Listen, I understand what you're trying to say, but I believe that it's sounds a bit closed minded.

That's why there are rovers on Mars, studying the past habitability and, with the upcoming rover, searching for signs of past life - because we have good reasons to believe that Mars was habitable in the past. No such reasons for the Moon, it is and always been to all intents and purposes lifeless.

They don't know that for sure, even though I do believe that it is lifeless now. The Moon could be a chunk of the Earth that was separated after some cosmic impact, or from somewhere else. They don't know anything for sure. So saying that it has always been lifeless is nothing more than scientific reckless speculation. Far from being a Scientific fact, which Science is supposedly all based on correct?

I do agree though that we should focus more on the planets within our solar system, but look at Titan (Saturn's Moon), should we ignore it? Of course not, and I know that we are not. It has an atmosphere closest to Earth's. So assumptions concerning planetary satellites need not apply, Let us find concrete proof and then move on.

We gained a whole lot of information about the Moon from the orbiters, as I mentioned above. It would be foolish to ignore that, and claim that only by landing humans or rovers can we achieve anything useful.

Who claimed that by only landing humans or Rovers could we achieve anything? Nobody did. However landing even just a Rover on our Moon, makes perfect sense to me. Actually while on the subject, we should already have a base with stored fuel and the ability to launch into space from the Moon, which would then allow us to save the much wasted fuel that is used in order to exit Earth's Atmosphere. Appreciate the response. ~$heopleNation

reply to post by SheopleNation


In the most popular hypothesis of the origin of the Moon, it _is_ a chunk of Earth, broken off by an huge impact. But at that time (and thanks to the impact) it was molten rock, so no life could possibly exist or even have a chance to evolve there. The Moon doesn't have a strong electromagnetic field like the Earth, doesn't have a proper atmosphere, not enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere, no liquid water ever detected or even hypothesised to exist... need I go on? The Moon's lifelessness isn't a blind assumption, it's practically a certainty based on everything we know.

A space mission needs clear, justified goals. You can't just say "Send a rover there and dig, dig, dig, because you might come across fossils. I don't have any evidence to justify that, but just do it." I hope you understand that.

Titan is different, it has a thick atmosphere and lakes or seas of liquid hydrocarbons - organic compounds which serve as very basic building blocks of life. So it's not that unreasonable to want to study it more closely, or even to enterntain an idea about possible life on Titan. Jupiter's moon Europa is even better, as it's hypothesised to have underground ocean of salty water, staying liquid and relatively warm. So it's not a discrimination against the moons in general, it's just judging by everything we know about the Moon, there's no reason to even speculate that it was habitable at any point.

we should already have a base with stored fuel and the ability to launch into space from the Moon, which would then allow us to save the much wasted fuel that is used in order to exit Earth's Atmosphere.

I agree, and the only reason we don't have that (and, incidentally, haven't landed men or rovers in a long time) is that the space agencies decided to concentrate big efforts on the Earth's orbit (Mir, Space Shuttle, the ISS, satellites and space telescopes), partly for the science and technology side of it, partly for the military and national security side of it. We are still learning to live and work in space, we are still developing technologies that would allow long-term habitation away from Earth. Perhaps this is the reason we haven't rushed to land on the Moon again. If we did, we might not have had the Shuttle and the ISS. But with the Shuttle retired, and the ISS being completed and being resupplied commercially, we finally have time, money and resources to go to the Moon again.

reply to post by wildespace

In the most popular hypothesis of the origin of the Moon, it _is_ a chunk of Earth, broken off by an huge impact.

Not exactly a chunk and not exclusively part of Earth.

reply to post by wildespace


Appreciate the reply. Well I hope that we get going with building a base on the Moon, if we have not already secretly done, so that we can launch from it, which would save a lot of fuel for longer trips within the Solar System. I like to think that there are fossils beneath the surface of Mars. ~$heopleNation