Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tellemurius]

This whole conversation reminds me of the Global Village Construction Set. Make it Moon Village CS instead, put some more people to develop the designs, and I can see how a few selenauts could by themselves construct a base and basic industry on the Moon, with little supplies required from Earth.

Now thats dwarfy, look theres even jobs to assign!

[Scoops Novel]

There's an important question that need to be answered first; a. when and why we'll likely try intrasolar exploration, and my own personal one, when we can counter long term effects of low gravity?

[RedKing]

Ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-ne-necro!

[10ebbor10]

There's an important question that need to be answered first; a. when and why we'll likely try intrasolar exploration, and my own personal one, when we can counter long term effects of low gravity?

All hail the mighty necromancer. Nevertheless, Answers for thy questions.

a. Depends on your difference on We. My Money would be on the Chinese, or a Chinese sparked second Space Race. If that fails, we'll have to hope for the commercial sector(Ie asteroid mining or Second gen fusion)

b. Might be a long time off. I guess around the same time we can easily cure osteoperosis and all sorts of heart diseases, as those tend to be main problem. For spaceships we can just rotate them on their axis, which has been prototyped.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

As I recall we have already demonstrated that sleeping in a centrifuge is sufficient to ward off bone decay in microgravity.

[Nadaka]

There's an important question that need to be answered first; a. when and why we'll likely try intrasolar exploration, and my own personal one, when we can counter long term effects of low gravity?

The long term effects of low gravity can be countered right now.

All you need is a structure that spins fast enough to create enough inertia to make up the difference between low gravity and normal gravity. We can do this for 0 gravity, we can do this for low gravity. You can build a colony like a merry go round, or like a train on an inclined circular track.

[RedKing]

You can build a colony like a merry go round

In space, no one can hear you wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Starver]

(A bit necrotic.  But never mind.  [And when I started this, there'd been no replies.  Ah well.])

A) [Assuming you mean with real people, not just probes like Curiosity]
 The 'when' and 'why' may be linked together quite a bit.  There's reasons to not do, mostly "Money could be spent better", and there's reasons to do, which for Apollo was "We[1] need to beat the Russians!", but it's hard to properly evaluate what the overriding future "to do" reason will be that overrides all the "not to do" ones.  If SpaceX, etc, get their act together, it may be "We can beat Virgin Galactic/Scaled Composites" on a private venture into manned space-flight, and this may even continue into intrasolar.  Right now, I can't think of any national (i.e. representative national space agency, with the backing of the government) programme that has much of a definite target for manned transit to the moon.  Well, there's the Chinese, by many accounts, but it's hard to say whether there target reaches (or stops at!) that distance of transit.  They might be happy to just 'camp' in LEO for a while, once they've proven that their current programme is consistently capable of getting over that initial hurdle.

There's a whole lot of wiggle-room, though.  Mainly for anything unforeseen happening.  (Suddenly North Korea comes out of nowhere and actually sends a person to an asteroid.  Or something requires a Deep Impact/Armageddon-style mission, because "Robots just can't do what's being asked of them".)  Pessimistically, we're looking at inertia keeping us down on Earth (and even abandoning the foothold we currently have, in the ISS, if I'm feeling rather gloomy).  Optimistically, someone'll find a very good reason to send foot-troops further out than they are now.  The utter flip side, in the pessimistic direction, we find an absolutely vital reason to go out there (e.g. Bellus is coming, and Zyra will be 'our' new home), which at best gets some of us off-world before

B) We can now.  Or know, at least, that if we can make (a tolerable) centrifuge then the passive effects of low gravity can be mitigated for at least off-duty hours.  And we're currently learning about the dietary changes that might be useful to offset even the biological collateral from the remaining periods of freefall/microgravity/light-weightedness.



[1] The US, that is.  I'm not USian.  I'm UKian.  We went "Yes, we've successfully launched our first satellite, let's cancel our space programme while we're on a high."

[10ebbor10]

Also, a comparison of budget, just for fun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

NASA: $18.724 billion (Fiscal Year 2011)   (Going to drop to 17. 770)
ESA: $5.38 Billion (2012) (Rising at the moment.) Note: The ESA is not the only European space program
Roscosmos:($3,8 billion) (2011)
CSNA: US$ 500 million (official);
CSNA: US$ 1.3 billion (Euroconsult)

I believe those are all the major spaceprograms. I'm quite suprised by the low budget the Chinese have.

[RedKing]

Also, a comparison of budget, just for fun.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

NASA: $18.724 billion (Fiscal Year 2011)   (Going to drop to 17. 770)
ESA: $5.38 Billion (2012) (Rising at the moment.) Note: The ESA is not the only European space program
Roscosmos:($3,8 billion) (2011)
CSNA: US$ 500 million (official);
CSNA: US$ 1.3 billion (Euroconsult)

I believe those are all the major spaceprograms. I'm quite suprised by the low budget the Chinese have.

1. Chinese "official" statistics should always be taken with a block of salt.
2. They're still working on mastering the basics, not advanced robotic probes and floating x-ray observatories and such. Those are for next year. 
3. I would expect the budget to increase steadily and substantially over the next several years as they get serious into the Tiangong program.

But yeah, as long as they don't suffer a setback from a major economic downturn or major internal strife, I think the Chinese are going to be the prime mover in space exploration in the 21st century. Which is a good thing if it triggers a second peaceful space race.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

But yeah, as long as they don't suffer a setback from a major economic downturn or major internal strife, I think the Chinese are going to be the prime mover in space exploration in the 21st century. Which is a good thing if it triggers a second peaceful space race.

Spread the word: "US Congress willing to allow Chinese Space Supremacy".

(Though I see China facing both major economic downturn and major internal strife, in that order.)

[Guardian G.I.]

Making a foothold on the Moon for the future manned missions to other planets (and beyond) would require enormous amounts of money and resources to be spent for decades without any short-term gains (or profit).
I don't really think that any democratic state today can actually afford that. Everyone is too busy implementing austerity measures and trying to be re-elected for another 4 years.
Powerful authoritarian states can do that, because they can mobilize the industry and the research institutes for space exploration and can pump resources into it without any threat of "Oh, with current budget cuts, we don't have enough money for it, we're shutting down everything". So, I won't be surprised to see Chinese or Russians (if they'll become as powerful as Soviet Union once was. They seem to be working on it.) establishing permanent bases on the Moon. Americans? Not so likely, if only they don't become a fascist dictatorship.

Also, all moon bases will probably be strictly national (no joint UN projects) because everyone would want to have a bigger share of the natural resources (the ending of the above-mentioned "Iron Sky" is a perfect example of how international cooperation can quickly break down).

[10ebbor10]

There are no natural resources on the moon. None worth hauling to Earth anyway.

(Except for HE-3, and there's so much of it  and demand is and will be so small* that making multi national bases is way more feasible than a single nation base.)
* I mean, a kilo can run a plant for most of the year, I believe (Not sure though)

Also, the ESA has some benefits too, in that they have a much larger income base, making budget cuts much more unlikely. It also means that if there's a disagreement, they go nowhere though.

The Russian space program doesn't seem to be going anywhere soon though.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

You don't know for sure that there aren't any resources on the moon worth taking. It isn't exactly like we can search it as easily as we can Earth.

[kaijyuu]

We can always start up the rumor that it's made of cheese, again. It'd get me to want to go there.