Is it really necessary to send humans to those places just to get the knock-on benefits? Couldn’t we do those things directly, without going there?
It seems to me that, today, those who have the money to spend on these endeavors would only do so if there were perceived short-term benefits to themselves. That means they plan to exploit the resources, or increase their own power somehow.
I know the good engineers that make this happen are doing it for the challenge and in the pursuit of knowledge, and I know that’s why we poors support it, but that doesn’t “pay the bills.” What is the motivation behind the money? Why are they really doing this?
same thing theyre doing here. exploit the resources til the planet is destroyed
NASA spending has historically created more in return than is spent. It’s somewhat expensive (essentially a rounding error next to military spending though), but the science done gives a good return on investment. This isn’t just like on moon rocks or whatever, but developing technology that the missions need. Things like thermally reflective lightweight fabric, or a ton of other things. The science done on the Moon is worth a lot on its own, but it’s also not the only thing we’re getting out of it.
However, what are billionaires getting out of it? Hopefully it’s just the opportunity to profit from the contracts and not something more nefarious. We all know it is though eventually.
It’s a lot cheaper to launch with just the fuel needed to get to the moon, then refuel there and launch again in the much lighter gravity. It’ll make it easier/cheaper/less resource intensive to explore space.
Whoever gets to the moon first gets to throw moon rocks at the others.
We’re hoping to send all the billionaires one way to mars
Build a large space at least a thousand feet high. Pump in over pressured atmosphere and build a wing suit so I can fly under my own power.
Datacenters is why China is so interested. Low radiation in moon caves. Free cooling. Low risk of espionage.
-1. The moon has HUGE reserves of Helium 3. Earth has almost none and is quickly running out. This is due to the fact that much of those reserves come from the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field deflects that.
-2. It’s fairly easy to launch rockets from the lunar surface, and comparatively easy to launch things to the Moon vs. Directly from Earth to Deep space.
-3a. The moon blocks much of the radio chatter from Earth (on it’s far side) meaning radio telemetry and astronomy have a MUCH easier time doing research
-b. By using such methods in concert with Terrestrial installations/telescopes, it makes for a FINE “natural” interferometer for literal logarithmic fractions of the price over Conventional Lagrange point based systems.
-4. The moon is ideal for biological “life boating” (google the “Svalbard Seed Bank” to get what I’m talking about)
-5. Earth’s gravity can sometimes skew the results of VERY sensitive nuclear particle experiments. A particle collider on the moon might lead to exciting discoveries in quantum physics. Also such colliders require lots of liquid helium for cooling. (see point 1) The moon gets INCREDIBLY cold on it’s night side, which saves on energy costs to boot, and night on the moon lasts for 2 weeks.
-6. The Lunar crusts’ composition is almost identical to Earth’s which means it probably has huge reserves of lithium, gold, platinum, titanium, and palladium. The fact that it gets seeded by meteorites frequently also increases these odds.
Military base to shoot down the sitelites and rain missiles on any country that wont let the epistien class fuck kids
Space Buc-ee’s
It’s for the elite to escape the earth when they render it unlivable via climate change
But even a 10C rise on earth still makes earth more hospitable than the moon
Begin getting the species out of the solar system.
Yes, I know many of you think we should all die in a fire, but personally, I’m a fan of “The Last Question” by Isaac Asimov.
Anyway, wherever you happen to be on this flaming cannonball of a planet we call home, I hope you’re having an excellent day.
I pedo elite want to turn earth into a colony of resources for them. It’s not about Mars it’s about getting away from us.
The ONE justifiable thing I could see is to set up a massive telescopic observatory on the far side of the moon.
Why the far side? Because the moon goes into eclipse many times a year and on those occasions when it’s a full lunar eclipse - at the far side, it is in the shadow of earth and is for a few minutes, the darkest place in the solar system we can have massive equipment arrays permanently set up to look into deepest space.
there no reason for that to be manned any more than space telescopes are. You just need data relays.
Agreed, no need for it to be manned after it’s built. Maybe the occasional trip for general maintenace and that’s it…
ah I see what you are saying. as much as I do want to push automation a specific thing liek that which is beyone our current level of automation. yeah I could see.
Tourism. Tell me you don’t want to try sleeping in reduced gravity.
Probably invent some new sports. And because we don’t know what we don’t know. So it’s hard to build a robot to look for what we don’t know about.
