Will we have a lunar base in our lifetime? What is holding us

>>8019756
>Will we have a lunar base in our lifetime? What is holding us back from doing this?

Public and political will to budget for it.

>>8019756
>Will we have a lunar base in our lifetime?
Maybe.

>What is holding us back from doing this?
Politics.

A lunar base is definitely possible using current technology and infrastructure. However, it would require a significant amount of money to be committed over a long duration, with little-to-no short-term gains. That's something that most politicians would need a lot of convincing to agree to.

>>8019756
Think of how expensive maintaining the ISS is. A lunar base is the same thing but 1000 times worse

>>8019910
Maintaining the ISS isn't THAT expensive per year. Compared with shit like waging war or enforcing drug laws, running a scientific outpost in space is pretty cheap. And I doubt a Lunar base would be vastly worse: one of the main goals would likely be developing increased self-sufficiency and independence.

>>8019756
>What is holding us back from doing this?
Economics
The costs far outway the potential benefits.

>inb4 He3

>>8019945
There isn't much economic incentive to go back to the Moon, but it would be really valuable from a scientific perspective.

>>8019910
ISS was expensive because the shuttle was an expensive piece of shit
And then they are paying russia to launch their shit.

>>8019761
More specifically, democrats. The only two things they DON'T want to spend money on are defense and space exploration.

>>8019756
The most valuable thing the moon can offer us scientifically is that it'd be easier to launch rockets.

We've been there, we have satallites there, we have rovers there, we've brought back samples. It's a cold, dead, rock, nothing else. We won't find anything interesting because the surface is simply too old, evidence by severe cratering.

With the very limited money space programs are alotted, we should be spending that money in places where we can make significant scientific advances, which is why the main focus is on Mars and Europa right now. If governments were willing to pour money into space programs, maybe we'd have a spark of colonilization, however it'd be much easier and safer in the long run to do that high up Venus' atmosphere. This is hardly ever talked about though, because there would be no place to stick a flag.

>>8020125
wat?
how do you intend to mine for resources on venus?

NASA gets 20 billion a year, thats plenty of money to build up infrastructure & bring down launch costs by orders of magnitude, then send large manned missions to other worlds

However the money is mostly spent on makework shit

Specially for the moon, prospecting needs to be done all over the surface, there will be large quantites of water, rare metals, and other valuable materials.

>>8020020
>it would be really valuable from a scientific perspective.
Mwah. I'm guessing it would not generate an influx in published papers.
Just like the ISS has nice webcams but not much else

>>8019910
>The financial cost of the Iraq war has been more than $845 billion to the U.S. government

>The cost of the International Space Station, including development, assembly and running costs over 10 years, comes to €100 billion.

>>8020020
>it would be really valuable from a scientific perspective

There is literally nothing of real significance on the moon. Through and through its a world comprised of spin off mantle/crust material from Earth and Theia

No volcanism, geysers, frozen volatiles, subsurface oceans, just rock and dirt

>>8021038

Well it woud be easier to launch Mars mission from the moon

>>8019756
No forget it , the humanity will fail at the great filter just look whats currently happening to your home

>>8020220
>Just like the ISS has nice webcams but not much else
????
The ISS generates tons of research. Just look at the manifests for any of the cargo missions heading there - they're something like 1/3rd full of experiments.

>>8021038
>There is literally nothing of real significance on the moon.
It's the closest available low-gravity environment.
We still only have a very vague idea about its chemistry, geology, and formation.
The surface-solarwind interaction is supposed to be pretty interesting.
AFAIK, no-one has actually directly studied the subsurface enviroment on the Moon at all. A meter-deep hole would be unexplored territory.
It's a reasonable proving ground for a lot of techniques needed for interplanetary exploration (ISRU etc) that still permits an immediate abort and return to Earth.
It's also a plausible site for scientific equipment that wants to be anchored somewhere but needs to be far away from the noise of the Earth (radiotelescopes etc).

>>8021068
>it woud be easier to launch Mars mission from the moon
Not really. You would need to be REALLY good at building rockets and making fuel there before Earth->Moon->Wherever could compete with Earth->Wherever.

>>8021075
>just look whats currently happening to your home
Lots of really cool science and technology, and people seriously discussing the challenges facing us?

>>8021038
What about all the helium-3 on the moon? Is that still a viable industry or is it debunked sci-fi junk?

>>8021414
It may or may not be a viable industry once/if we have significant demand for fusion fuels.

There's definitely not going to be any demand for it any time soon though.

>>8021414
Kek no. For one, we don't have fusion. Second even if with fusion, the energy investment to actually harvest it is really high. And it is high compared to the amount of energy you get out of fusion.

>>8021038
The moon has the same damn stuff as earth, but that stuff is higher up in the potential well.

So in terms of getting shit into orbit, it is more energetically favorable to launch it from the moon than from the earth.

Second, we do know the moon has frozen volatiles, we are not sure exactly how much but they are there:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_water

>>8020213
You're seriously over estimating the value of the moon and underestimating the value of other places.

Guess what, in the high atmosphere on Venus, there's a lot of water, and a lot of oxygen, and we'd be protected by the magnetosphere of Sun, so radiation wouldn't kill us. It's a nice temperature for us, unlike moon. We'd be able to go to and from Venus very easily, and this would supply an incredible amount of knowledge about how a flawed CO2 cycle will affect an Earth-sized planet's atmosphere. You know, knowledge that would be nice to have in the relatively near future if our climate change data is correct. Not equivocating the two, btw. Venus' atmosphere is more apt for life than Mars' surface, and surely more so than Moon's. We would have all the resources we need, including power, except for food, which could be easily grown since Venus has about the same gravity.

Literally the only thing worth of value on Moon is rare-Earth metals and helium-3. We couldn't live on Moon. We could live in Venus' atmosphere. The amount of water on Moon is realistically not a huge amount, and would be so ridiculously costly to transport. If you want a lot of water, go to Europa. Which, is what we're doing.

>>8020115
>The only two things they DON'T want to spend money on are defense

thats not true, they want to spend loads on the defense of other countries.

>>8020115
Pretty much this, unfortunately.

It's why I'm personally sad that Jeb ended up being such a big flop the presidential campaign. He seemed like the candidate who was the most invested in refunding NASA.

Press J to pay respects to the most expensive presidential campaign in history. If only the money could have went directly to NASA instead.

J

>>8021641
Personally I would give added value to the moon as a proof of concept. It's pretty inhospitable and it's easily reachable. If we can colonize the moon then it proves that we colonize other places as well provided we can get there.

>>8019756
>1st
probably not
>2nd
an actuall reason

>>8021641
Anything can be transported around on the moon by suborbital hoppers

Theres no water in venus, you could maybe produce water from CO2 and hydrogen, but that'll take energy & machinery which would need to be shipped over there.

You have no access to the surface & mining solid materials, so every ounce needs to be shipped.

You greatly over estimate the benefit of having 1 atmosphere of pressure, its irrelevant.
Nor do you, or I, have any idea of what resources are availible on the Moons surface.

>>8022223
No, I can tell you with a good amount of confidence that the only thing worth anything is He-3, and that's not even worth the trouble since we don't even have efficient nuclear fusion yet.The rare Earth metals that would be on Moon are really not even worth it.

What do you think the point of our space program is? We're trying to extend our reach, not spend inordinate amounts of money to have a chance of staying here a bit longer.

Look, here's a proposal, become a multibillionaire and spend your money on a moon base if you really think it's that productive, but it's really evident that there are more important things to do.

>>8022261
Good amount of confidence based on what?

I can tell you with good confidence that the moon will have huge deposits of rare metals & water in the millions of impact craters

And a moon base will be a fraction of the cost of going to venus

>>8021012
But oil

>>8022261
He-3 on the Moon is a joke, it's easier to make it down here than it is to go up there and churn through millions of tons of lunar regolith for a tiny amount of it.

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ironically, Hillary Clinton is probably our best hope for this happening from the current crop of candidates.

She wanted to be an astronaut as a kid and frequently makes comments about spaceflight and the importance and history of the program. Wouldn't be surprised if she wanted to define her term as the first female president with some epoch defining technological achievement.

Also, historically, Hillary is one of the most hawkish democratic politicians, and hawkish presidents tend to support the space program much more than ones who only focus on domestic issues and avoid foreign entanglements. Look at FDR, Truman, Eisenhower JFK, Reagan, HW, GW vs Nixon, Reagan, Carter, Clinton, Obama

Bernie has previously voted to reduce NASA spending, Trump has said he'd rather focus on making america great again, Kasich and Cruz have said almost nothing about the space program at all.

>>8022736
edit: reagan should only be on the left there. typing on my phone.

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>>8022711
The point of mining it is as a fuel source, you get more energy out than you put in. Making it here defeats the purpose.

But yes, you have to sift through so much regolith that the energy returned on investment(EROI) isn't that great. Getting such a low EROI for something nuclear is quite amazing.

>>8022268
The metals available on the moom aren't that rare. The Moon has been confirmed to have water though.

The moon has the same stuff the earth has, but that stuff's easier to get to anywhere. And it's a lot closer than everywhere else.

If we want to build large space ships, space colonies, or solar power satellites in space, it'd make sense to build them from materials from the moon rather than launching them from earth

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>>8022756
>The metals available on the moom aren't that rare.
On the other hand the metals found are useful, pic related.

It does surprise me though, after all much of the heavy metals on Earth are from impacts (Au, U etc) since original heavy components have sunk in towards the core of the Earth. So why no such heavy metals on the Moon?

Anyway, as you process regolith for these minerals you might as well extract the He3 as a bonus. 1 tonne He3 is supposedly worth 3 billion USD for the electric power generated by He3 mediated fusion alone.

>>8024976
>So why no such heavy metals on the Moon?

Moon Men from Mars stripped the resources before they died out from Lunar warming.