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[mainiac]

The entire point of a moon colony is that it makes future liftoff costs manageable.  That's the big advantage that it has over earth.  So you don't ask if the lift costs are low enough.  You ask if the things we could do without the lift costs are valuable enough to justify doing this one up front investment to lower the lift costs of everything to come later.

[LordSlowpoke]

Reading this thread, I've found it quite silly that nobody pointed out we could just use mass drivers to send stuff from the moon to Earth yet. For the record, the reason why we don't use them to send stuff into space now is because the ships accelerate to Mach 4 and it starts getting wonky from there, mostly due to air resistance.

What I'm going to write here may have been stated before, but let's just go ahead and write this down: To make a moon base work, you need either someone (a group, government, what will you) motivated enough that the financial side of the deal doesn't really matter to them, or an explosion in demand for a resource found only there (H3 comes to mind, but then...) - I wouldn't bet on these happening soon, especially in the current climate. We've got enough problems down here on Earth, why move them anywhere else while we still haven't managed to switch from fossil fuels to a more sustainable alternative?

Plus, nobody would really take kindly to a country claiming the whole moon for themselves. Some small mining operations, maybe a manned outpost, but a full-blown colony would cause a... well, it just wouldn't be nice a situation to look at, that's all I can say. Nothing to declare wars about, sure, but you'll have everyone and their mothers claiming asteroids, planets, moons, what will you...

[Deadmeat1471]

It most certainly was.  They expected to make a lot of money from those colonies.  And many colonies were very profitable over a long enough term.  Very often the colonies were explicitly money making operations in which stock was sold.

Do you have examples and numbers?

This is pretty basic world history.  Spanish treasure fleet and the viceroyalties, the East India companies, the Hudson Bay company, the Mayflower compact?  Any of this ringing a bell?

I'd like to add, many colonies were infact not profitable also, which is exactly why the north american provinces came into crown control in the first place.
I'd say space ventures are likely to fall into this catagory more often than any other.

[palsch]

This is pretty basic world history.  Spanish treasure fleet and the viceroyalties, the East India companies, the Hudson Bay company, the Mayflower compact?  Any of this ringing a bell?

Those fall into my two categories fairly nicely I think. They are either securing existing trade (in the Spanish, East India Company and Hudson Bay examples, although those weren't so much colonies as methods put in place to administer territories conquered or previously colonised) or are colonists looking to improve their lot by venturing into the unknown. The Mayflower compact was far from profitable for it's sponsors, but arguably highly profitable for the colonists in ways that had no effect on the sponsoring nation.

Which sort of ties back into my point again. We shouldn't expect to see profit return to those on earth who foot the bill. The profit from establishing a colony is having a colony, with anything that develops down the line a bonus. We shouldn't expect an economic return.

[mainiac]

The Hudson Bay colony most definitely was not about securing existing trade, the local population in that region was entirely tribal and cut off from the wider world, there was no existing trade.  Nor was the large majority of the Spanish main based around trade, they wanted gold or the stuff produced by plantations that didn't exist prior to contact.  While the East India companies did have a trade aspect in it's foundation, that doesn't account for the large scale plantations they set up to engage in centuries of exploitation of the local opportunities.  Most of their long term profits were gained by crop that weren't even native to the regions they were setting up.  Also, the colonization of the 13 colonies was about making a profit from the very beginning.  And this was not making a profit from existing trade, this was claiming land with the belief that it would be profitable in the long term.  It took them 6 years to even have a cash crop.  So it's clearly not the case that people won't start colonizing in a speculative fashion.  That's what colonies have always been about.

[sneakey pete]

Its chicken and egg for outer space industry really, as has been said. Sure, its much cheaper to build in space... but apart from building factors in space, what demand is there for actually building in space? currently very little. It'll really need some serious funding from someone to kick it off.


With regards to mass drivers on the moon: perhaps they'd work. On the other hand, your talking about building something that has never been built before anywhere near that size before... except doing it on the moon. As cheap as it might be to send cargo back to the earth once setup, just think of how much effort it would take to do so. I mean, look at the size of the rocket needed to launch a single spaceship to the moon. Even if there was no return leg and you put in 3 apollo style landers instead of the command module, it'd still take a huuuge amount of effort to setup a mass driver on the moon in the first place.

[Jacob/Lee]

Launching a rocket from the moon would also be a lot easier than on earth. A moon base, though, would take some serious funding from a very powerful source. Just sending a few men and the supplies they need to the moon is expensive. Imagine trying to ship all the materials and tools required to build a functional base. I think we should focus on more efficient rocketry before we try to get a base on the moon...

[palsch]

EDIT: Nevermind.

Again, all I really wanted to say was that modern commercial incentives are not a valid reason to establish a lunar colony.

[Flying Dice]

Thing is, modern corporations, for all that I despise them on principle, have the sort of private wealth and resources to be able to do this, even if national governments or international organizations aren't willing to. If some investors with long sight decided to fund the construction of a moonbase, they (or their successors, more likely) would eventually see substantial profits once space travel began in earnest. Think about it like this: if some company owned a moonbase which was a (or possibly the) jumping off point for intrasystem exploration and colonization, they would be in an ideal position to make money off it, even if they didn't fund any colonies or industrial efforts, simply by charging fees for use of their facilities.

[Starver]

It most certainly was.  They expected to make a lot of money from those colonies.  And many colonies were very profitable over a long enough term.  Very often the colonies were explicitly money making operations in which stock was sold.

Do you have examples and numbers?

I'm not sure it fully applies to either side of the argument, but the circumstances of the Darien Scheme are interesting reading.

[Starver]

So, it will only become commercially viable when liftoff costs are decreased.

Or is that the wrong way round?  If lift-off costs continue to be high, then lunar (and later asteroidal) material sources could trump Earthly ones when building our orbital installations, etc...

[mainiac]

Its chicken and egg for outer space industry really, as has been said. Sure, its much cheaper to build in space... but apart from building factors in space, what demand is there for actually building in space? currently very little.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/More_Than_1200_Satellites_To_Be_Launched_Over_The_Next_10_Years_999.html

More then 1000 satellites are expected to be launched in the decade 2010-2020, with industry revenues over that time being projected at nearly 200 billion.  More then half of those satellites are going into orbits above LEO.  That's not exactly very little.

Look at this from the long term perspective for a moment.  Suppose that you have a government that can borrow at very, very low interest rates for medium term (like the US government currently can).  Invest 400 billion in a moon colony and start building all our satellites up there.  In 20 years you've repaid your investment and you have a moon colony. 

Even better, you can probably lower the launch costs and increase the number of satellites that we use, increasing the size of the market.  If launch costs get low enough, you can start building microwave relay solar power satellites and start catering to the earth's vast energy market.

[Valid_Dark]

I'd go to the moon, but I'm skrrd of princess Luna (the mare in the moon) I heard she eats people.

[Muz]

While there are plenty of reasons to build a moon base... I don't see who'd want to live there. People get paid tons just to live on an oil rig a few weeks.

I'd be reluctant to live in the middle east, even though they have plenty of food, drinks, and hot women. The moon has none of these. You'd probably be eating strawberry flavored paste, drinking your own processed urine, and maybe get a few space wheat bread if you somehow grow crops up there.

Anyone working on a moon base would be multi-millionaires.

[Flying Dice]

And of course anyone working on a moonbase for an extended period of time would quite literally be unable to come home again. Or go anywhere else, at least on a ship that pulls much acceleration. So yeah, they'd have to be either very well paid, very adventurous with no family or friends that they cared about, or convicts.