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[jester]

Short term yeah, but say 50, 100 150 years, asteriod strikes, population issues, blah, blah blah, things are so hostile up there any 1 thing goes wrong and pfffft.  screwed.  Yeah you have silicon and some metals/minerals, but it isnt ever going to cover all the trace elements humans need to survive.  Sit down and think about it for 10 mins

[jester]

And nobody replies for 10 minutes after all the ninja battles, creepy

[Andrew425]

I don't know why people suggest mining out asteroids.

Any source of metal unless its iridium is worthless compared to the cost you have to get. Even iridium and the like would have to be huge deposits.

When I think of a moon base i'm thinking of more like a couple hundred people if that, thousands would be fairly stupid.

[sneakey pete]

I don't know why people suggest mining out asteroids.

Any source of metal unless its iridium is worthless compared to the cost you have to get. Even iridium and the like would have to be huge deposits.

Oh, yes, we have heaps of cheap and easy to get metals on earth. except it costs 1000+ bucks to get ever kg of them into orbit. The whole idea of asteroid mining is that it could possibly be a cheap way of getting metals into orbit for construction of spaceships or whatever else

[Starver]

I just say: learn the lessons from Biosphere 2.  Set up a moon colony.  Not a dozen or so astronauts... erm... lunanauts...  selenauts?  Anyway, inspired and guided by the life-sciences, set it up to not need all its oxygen and food shipping to it.  Cheaper to operate without having to, after all...

It wouldn't be a full-blown colony straight from Day 1, no, but over a decade or two, as the possible uses of the resources of the moon are gradually found out, developed, things are tried (accidents and disasters are learnt from and mitigated)...  It's not just one base, anyway.  Outlying mining claims, those crAAAZzzzy radioastronomers busy sending secret signals to the aliens, over the other side of the Moon, obviously a moon-style portacabin or two set up around various important sites like the Apollo 11 one (with a fancy velvet rope (or six!) strung up to deter anyone with 'clumsy' feet scuffing up the place), because there'll probably be people rich enough to to get the Virgin Galactic/equivalent trip over to the Moon just because they can, but they'll pay extra (or ship some improved strains of algae over with themselves) to go there if anyone lets them.

There'll be things for people to do, even those who dress up in mock Apollo-style EVA suits (while everyone else is sporting modern polyfabric suits to show off the bermudas/bikinis they wear beneath) and giving the same, stilted performance on the special 'sound stage ON THE MOON!' mock-up of the original landing site (or of the original sound-stage, perhaps... but don't get me started about that nutjob idea), twice nightly...  And of course a visit to the Alan B. Shephard Memorial Golf Course to hit a few shots down it, or down the 2km-ish long driving range, and there'll be staff for that.

But that's for the visitors, and I think I mentioned (was this thread, yes?) that an Antarctica expedition composes of people with multiple roles. The hydroponics need keeping an eye on, the rovers need maintaining, the robots and Zambini-esque solar panel (re-)laying equipment needs keeping on the go, the space-port needs its crane and maglev operators, the mass-driver has its need for people to keep an eye on it, or at least the machines and computers that keep an eye on it and everything else.  There'll be a space-port bar, which probably means there'll be space-port police to keep the peace, as well.  All of this on top of the geoselenologists surveying for deposits, astronomers in the visible light looking up and away from the half-the-time brightly reflecting surface and through various instruments (with truly massive mirrors, perhaps even massive individual mirrors in a vaster compound array, manufactured and held steady in the low gravity conditions, having no problems with atmospheric effects and the only real problem being the regolith grains hovering around through electrostatic means).  And there'll be doctors, and managers and liaisons, if not full-blown diplomatic staff, representing Earthly commercial and governmental interests.

Possibly a military-style presence, too, because of the nature of people.  Even if there's nothing official, there'll be people On The Spot, perhaps more akin to the Intelligence Community.

But not overnight.  If disaster strikes Earth in its first few years, it'll be touch and go, at best, but after a while there'll be either direct greenhouses or (more likely) collected sunlight cabled down to illuminate the aforementioned hydroponics areas, in underground caverns (natural or artificial), providing for most of the needs of the colonists, and other areas dealing with waste treatment ("freeze dry your excrement, ma'am?").  There's definitely the ability to create rocket fuel, without very much fuss and the virtually unlimited amount of energy they could accumulate, as well as fabricate new vehicles (ground and space) for themselves, should they ever actually suffer from a Dead Earth situation.  Or an apathetic/broke one.  Or one that was just so pre-occupied that it forgot it was supposed to be supporting their colonies off-planet.

And I'd rather be on a developed Moonbase with that problem than on anything the size and location of the ISS.  (Although it would of course be easier if I knew I could get into one of the Soyuz-esque lifeboats and have a decent chance of making it down to Earth, assuming that was somewhere it would be wise to go!)  It could be hairy, there could be strife, but there'll be expertise and determination in good measure.  Of course, the same could be said for asteroidal colonies and an actually worthwhile space-station that's built up to (within limits) the same degree of complexity as my hypothetical lunar colony.  Without the same access to new raw materials (in the latter's case, certainly) without trading with those locations that possess such things, but it should at least be able to keep its edible and drinkable supplies going, if not utterly left high and dry by its Earthly designers' and planners' inattention to such detail.

I suspect the biggest problem is that Earthly powers would rather that the Moon remain dependent on them.  It would not so much be now the threat that Russia has missiles on the Moon, pointing at the US, or the US has missiles on the Moon pointing at Russia, or indeed China has missiles on the Moon pointing at... whoever they don't like at the time.  But that it's possible that The Moon could have missiles on the Moon, pointing at everybody!

It's all been done in fiction (although I've not knowingly quoted anything, in the above, and completely avoided mention of monoliths and magnetic anomalies... until now, at least), as have the many other possibly futures.  I just want a future with a Moonbase (and other non-Earthly ones).  And I've already said I'm willing to risk an effective civil war across the solar system as part of that deal.  It helps that I probably won't live to be on the wrong end of the Moon missiles or the suicidally redirected asteroid or actually being in space when Earth stops sending supplies and initiates the remote shut-down procedures to the life-support systems, so excuse me if I'm a little blasé about some of the less desirable turnings in this road to the future...

And to the four ninjas:

• Jester: it's not actually one base, and you'd have other refuges and anything less than a moon-killer asteroid shouldn't (in itself) destroy the whole lunar population
• Jester (2): Well, I don't know about anyone else, but I was writing the above
• Andrew: Partly what Sneakey Pete says, partly because hollowing one out seems like a good idea for various reasons, and mostly because we don't actually know what we're going to get from asteroids, yet, so I for one am keeping an open mind
• SPete: There's the issue of distance (thus time), if not energy, to consider, but that's one thing.  Like I said at one point, this might eventually make certain lunar mining endeavours less economically viable than they were.

[Hubris Incalculable]

while everyone else is sporting modern polyfabric suits to show off the bermudas/bikinis they wear beneath

Yeah.. A really great way to die from cosmic radiation exposure. hey, at least you looked hot when you died, right?

[Starver]

Yeah.. A really great way to die from cosmic radiation exposure. hey, at least you looked hot when you died, right?

It's the future!  I already considered some form of radiation shielding/mitigation to be integral in that little vision of things to come, along with the essential puncture-proofness, heat build-up/loss issues, oxygen regeneration, comms and radiotelemetry, whether they needed any help to put on/take off, whether they could be worn (perhaps temporarily shorn of retractable hood and gloves) while inside airfilled zones, or could even have 'regular' clothes over the top of them like space jim-jams, whether the regolith would stick to them in clumps and need removing at every airlock entrance, etc, etc...

But my apologies for not making all those thought processes clear, for what was essentially a small segment of a very basic diorama!

[jester]

Again, its the moon, you are totally incapable of making small trivial stuff like say, dirt.  Your population can never grow, I dont think you appreciate what a closed system this would have to be without earth contact.  Humans need all sorts of trace elements you get naturally on earth that you just arent going to be able to produce on the moon.  Then there is the problem of humans not coping well after a few years without gravity, let alone the potential issues for developing fetuses.  This is just tip of the iceburg stuff too.

  For a long term, eventually fully independent colony id say mars was a maybe.  Short term could you live on the moon?  yeah, you could even keep a base going for as long as there were people round to ship more stuff in.  Long term fully independent moon colony is again a pipe dream.  I mean even discounting everything else, this thing would be hideously easy to sabotage in 100's of ways and pretty much every person who lived there would easily be able to perform many of them every day  1000s of people x 100 years = someone is going to wig out and pop the cork/pour booze into the CO2 scrubbers/reprogram the helper bots for evil or just plain do something stupid.

[mainiac]

Again, its the moon, you are totally incapable of making small trivial stuff like say, dirt.  Your population can never grow, I dont think you appreciate what a closed system this would have to be without earth contact.  Humans need all sorts of trace elements you get naturally on earth that you just arent going to be able to produce on the moon.  Then there is the problem of humans not coping well after a few years without gravity, let alone the potential issues for developing fetuses.  This is just tip of the iceburg stuff too.

1) Dirt isn't a very important substance.  Hydroponic have existed for a long time.
2) They actually could make dirt out of moon dust if they were so inclined.

3) Why without earth contact?  It's much easier to go from the moon to earth then from the earth to moon.  The delta v is smaller once you account for airbraking in the earth's atmosphere.  Solid booster rockets would be pretty easy to fashion out of aluminum and oxygen from moon-dust.
4) Trace elements are well, trace.  You don't need many of them.  Even a small amount of supplies from earth would take care of the trace elements.

5) Humans can't do low gravity for the complete life-cycle but they can do it for a long time with the proper exercise.  By the time that people are living their entire lives on the moon you have centrifuges or O'Neil cylinders.

  For a long term, eventually fully independent colony id say mars was a maybe.  Short term could you live on the moon?  yeah, you could even keep a base going for as long as there were people round to ship more stuff in.  Long term fully independent moon colony is again a pipe dream.  I mean even discounting everything else, this thing would be hideously easy to sabotage in 100's of ways and pretty much every person who lived there would easily be able to perform many of them every day  1000s of people x 100 years = someone is going to wig out and pop the cork/pour booze into the CO2 scrubbers/reprogram the helper bots for evil or just plain do something stupid.

Mars has a much larger delta v, stronger gravity (but still not nearly earth normal) has an atmosphere strong enough to interfere with kinetic launches but not strong enough to allow for safe airbraking of humans from orbit.

The fact that mars is slightly more earth-like then the moon doesn't actually mean it's more habitable.  Either way you are talking about living in artificial habitats.  But the moon has factors conductive to those artificial habitats.  It's low gravity and resources mean that a colony could be profitable and it's that profitability that makes it viable.

[jester]

Sorry mainiac, you missed the point, was talking about the 'lifeboat moon' reasoning for having a moonbase in case of catastrophic earth failure.  specifically:  why it wouldnt work long term.

[mainiac]

I see.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

1) Dirt isn't a very important substance.  Hydroponic have existed for a long time.

As has the even more space-saving method of aeroponic farming.

2) They actually could make dirt out of moon dust if they were so inclined.

This I am not so sure of. Moon dust has a lot of silica in it, right? That seems like it would impede plant growth.

5) Humans can't do low gravity for the complete life-cycle but they can do it for a long time with the proper exercise.  By the time that people are living their entire lives on the moon you have centrifuges or O'Neil cylinders.

If you trained the colonists to be able to sleep in centrifuges you could completely eliminate the problem. Seven hours a day of 1G is plenty to maintain bone structure.

[Tellemurius]

Sorry mainiac, you missed the point, was talking about the 'lifeboat moon' reasoning for having a moonbase in case of catastrophic earth failure.  specifically:  why it wouldnt work long term.

Thats out of topic too, the reasons we have been laying down aren't 'lifeboat'

[mainiac]

2) They actually could make dirt out of moon dust if they were so inclined.

This I am not so sure of. Moon dust has a lot of silica in it, right? That seems like it would impede plant growth.

You wouldn't use the moon dust as dirt directly.  But you could manufacture large quantities of dirt if you really wanted to and had enough power.

[jester]

Dirt is a hell of alot more than just dust, its more about biomass, minerals are really a tiny part of it.  Scientists have been trying to recreate dirt in a lab for years without success, soils are hideously complicated structures.

  The problem with Hydroponic farming is the closed system problem, if you keep just using the waste from the plants and whatever human waste you get a hold of for nutrients in a closed system, you can never quite collect as much as you had last time, if you can find other stuff to add in its ok.  Its finding the right stuff that is the issue.

edit, sorry if this seems off topic to some of you, the conversation started on about page 3.