Hey, I have no problems with the americans building them, more that im fairly sure if you established and american state on the moon, secession would ensue.
You know what I've got going round in my head right now? The cry "No taxation without gravitation!"
Nope, doesn't make much sense, but those colonials never did, either...
Why not build that space panel on the moon? Plenty of silicon for the panel and low gravity for the getting it into space.
That's one of the big ideas. Automated rovers to wander over the regolith like a set of Zamboni machines, converting/filtering/doping/processing the surface to make strips of solar panels.
(The same devices would reburbish and replace the panels once micro-meteorites (and not-so-micro meteorites) cause each strip to degrade. You could just have an awful lot of them... Getting the enormous power to Earth safely would be an issue. Being the guy with the joystick would be a great responsibility/opportunity[*delete as inapplicable]... all kinds of things to be thought of there...)
From a humanitarian heritage point of view, it shouldn't (visibly) be allowed to alter the visage of the moon, for any of the commonly held memes about what it looks like (face, man with fish, etc), although I am slightly tempted to suggest that the Man In The Moon should be given a Groucho Marx makeover... (If I had GIMP on this particular machine, which isn't my own, I'd do an example. But Paint just doesn't cut it.)
And, of course, the radio astronomers want the opposing face of the moon to be kept uncluttered for sensitive radio astronomy to be conducted (and/or governments want to use it for their secret stuff, or already do, or the aliens that control the governments already do, or it doesn't even exist and the moon is actually hollow on the other side).
So, we'd probably be looking at lining the sides (and across the poles) of the moon with massive solar fields, with more subtly stippled fields on the visible side and a limited amount of intrusion onto the far side so as to keep the major EM producing cables well down below the horizon.
Tellemurius: To land on the moon, you need to oppose the 1/6th Earth gravity, or thereabouts. Not crash into it. Asteroids are a matter of getting into the vicinity and then soft-docking with them as if it were a space-station (without a docking ring, but with, perhaps, the aid of some harpoon-like anchor things that drive angled bolts into the surface, explosively, on contact, if the composition allows, but we've soft-touched before and this is only because mining the asteroid is going to mean a lot more messing about than merely 'landing).
And getting away from an asteroid could be a matter of 'letting go', in certain circumstances, and merely providing normal 'space manoevering' levels of thrust in most others. The moon needs actual ascent-stages (at the moment, mass drivers and similar ballistic methods notwithstanding) to escape from.
I'm not entirely convinced that we're going to be able to do anything large-scale enough with asteroids this side of being able to do anything large-scale enough with the moon (although we've done unmanned sample-return missions to both types of destination, already). There are undoubtedly asteroids with big spins (should be able to rendezvous with a pole, unless there's an extra dimension to the tumble, and even then I can't see it being insurmountable with a bit of planning) and they'll be a valuable resource, to be sure, if we pick the right ones. Some select entities, out there, might end up being hollowed-out habitations, others may be given boosters/sails of their own and navigated to where they're more useful (to be the Space Elevator's counterweight?). But it's all a lot further from Earth than the Moon. A lot of the reasons I've give as to "why a moonbase" do indeed add to the arguments for "why the asteroids", of course, and even more so than "why Mars" except for the human factor. But there's also a psychological shift to be considered. Which isn't the best argument against, but it'll feature. Or, indeed, might be the added benefit used to pursue them. I'm looking forward (I think) to seeing this unfold. I hope it does while I can still appreciate it.
Another ninja or five to reply to.. Ok, @Tellemurious again, Moon = 1/6th of Earth's gravity. Not huge, but bigger than the 1/100th. Ion drives (of current kinds) wouldn't work. They're perhaps an order of magnitude below even the power needed to escape from your fabled 0.01g, as well, last I heard.
As it happens, I'm for automated advanced parties prepping the ground, but the big thing about being in space/on the moon/in asteroids/wandering around Mars is... that there are people in space/on the moon/in asteroids/wandering around Mars just in case something unavoidable happens to Earth (or to the moon, or to any given asteroid, or to Mars, or to a region of space we just happen to have someone floating through, for that matter). If we can find benefits to being in all these places at once, and there are ones, regardless of how much we argue about their relative merits, then we're on step further away from our parental home. And that's a good thing...
More ninjaing, it's hotting up, this conversation. Can't hope to keep up, just want to post this darn reply!
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Topic: A Base on the Moon (Read 16727 times)