patrick.net

That was fun to watch!

Inspirational.

They'll likely die in space from Covid-19 because they didn't social distance.

My kids loved it, wish we did more inspirational things.

Whoo Hoo!

Next step: Cancel sending the Dry Cleaning and 8th Grade Science Projects to the (Lunar) ISS. Nobody besides Boeing/Lockheed shareholders gives a shit if Mrs. Handley's students sent fruit flies to the Space Station.

Intead: Go to the Lunar Poles, find and crack Water Ice.

Then, Bob's your Uncle for the Inner Solar System and beyond.

If we aint: Experimenting with Spin Gravity or Ship to Ship Refueling, no more dicking around in the Earth System except on the Lunar Surface.

NoCoupForYou says

Then, Bob's your Uncle for the Inner Solar System and beyond.

Mining water would be pointless unless we can figure out how to use it as a cheap energy source.
Besides even then, we've got water on Earth why take it from the moon?
Easier launch, and all that is really a moot point. As humans will never be able to withstand years in space and return in good health.
We should be exploring autonomous robotic space exploration. But to what end?
For humans to colonize we would need to find a rock somewhere in space, rotating a small yellow dwarf star about the size of our own, and that planet to be the same distance from that star as the Earth, and that planet be exactly the same size as the Earth. And the planet has had billions of years, in the planetary oven to bake in a molten core, stabilized tectonic forces, an effective magnetosphere to protect from the close star's radiation, and the planet will have had to develop an atmosphere with 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, 0.04% carbon dioxide.

Those space explorers that left Earth for said planet, will have been long dead and the descendants will be many generations.
Look what happens to every great Civilization. The generation that finally makes it to their destination, wont have the self preservation skills of a stone age caveman.

Send a good robot and send lots of pictures. Samples and composition analysis would be nice to haves. Not that it would benefit mankind for anything other than our trivial curiosity.

Tenpoundbass says

Besides even then, we've got water on Earth why take it from the moon?

Low mass. Getting off the moon's gravity with full tanks of LH2/LOX instead of lugging it from the surface of the Inner Solar System's deepest gravity well, Earth. Cracking Ice into LH2/LOX is 19th Century Tech.

Huge mass & cost savings.

Then, as mentioned, the Highground. We can build massive comm sats and eventually build the dumb mass on the moon, and refuel them, we're constantly deorbiting comm and recon and weather sats when they run out of propellant or useful life. We can refurb them back at the moon, which is far easier to reach in terms of dV, or have drones shuttling to reuseable/refillable/upgradable sats in High Earth Orbit from the moon. All we need is to send the smart mass and more complex shit to the moon, and do smelting & assembly there + fueling. PLUS, no need for fairings and heavy mass to lift the shit.

We can get some serious bandwidth and maybe microwave power up there.

Plus we can refuel larger ships with lunar propellant from Water by sending tankers from the surface to Lunar Orbit or various Lagrange Points, allowing us to send more capable, more comfortable craft beyond, plus we're quite far out of the Well at that point.

Moon is rich in Titanium, Aluminium, and Iron for the dumb mass.

And it's a fantastic ASAT and Recon staging point. Most of our Rivals are looking for threats around the globe, not threats coming from behind the Moon.

Now building a "Lunar Gateway" is useless. It doesn't help us explore the moon or reduce DeltaV. If you can leave the moon it's fractional dV to get into Low Earth Orbit, so as a rescue station, not useful. It would probably take as much or more to dock with the thing, esp. in an emergency when it wasn't in the perfect location for lowest dV rendevous. All it does is expose astronauts to very high radiation without any benefits you couldn't obtain in LEO on a station.

The Poles have permadark shadow and 90%+ of the "year" sunshine. Sterling Engine heaven, given the huge differences in Near-absolute Zero temps in the Lunar Polar Crater and Broiling on the sundrenched highlands not far from it.

jazz_music says

Nothing can stay up there without getting the shit beaten out of it.

Yep, if you can service large, capable satellites instead of spending a fortune with smaller ones, and get 20-30 years out of them instead of 10, it's worth it.

It's something we'll have to learn to do for O'Neil Cylinders and any kind of travel, not just interstellar but into the Outer Solar System that will be years of journeying, there and back. Not just for manned flights, but more capable, larger probes.

Unless we break physics with Mithril-Powered Spaceflight, we ain't sending O'Neil Cylinders from Earth. Only the smart parts, the mass itself will have to come from an asteroid or low grav body.

Another thing that MUST be accepted: Nuclear Propulsion and Power. Solar simply isn't sufficient beyond Mars on any kind of reasonable scale or time, including for unmanned probes. Voyagers and Galileo had RTGs.

The only thing leaving Earth's surface should be people and smart parts. Everything dumb, like trusses and tanks and propellant, should be made off-world whenever possible.

We can already achieve non-rocket space propulsion: the microwave drive. It’s not powerful, but it can generate a tenth of a G almost indefinitely with a good sized fission reactor providing the power. We could assemble a ship with that sort of drive in space with multiple launches from Earth. It would take a lot of launches to get all the components up and then they’d have to be assembled in orbit. It would be pretty expensive, but we COULD do it with existing technology. We’d then have a space ship in orbit that could visit the other planets. A tenth of a G of constant acceleration is like a Prius on the highway. It’s not fast at first, but all that speed adds up! A couple of weeks of 1m/s/s acceleration would add up to (3600sec/hr)(24hr/day)(7days/week)(2) = 1,210,000meters per second! Or 1,210km/sec.
Or (1,210km/sec)/(2.6km/mile) x 3600sec/hr.
= 1,674,830 miles per hour!
I don’t care who you are, going that fast is pretty impressive. At that speed, you could get to Mars in a couple days, Jupiter in half a year! Actually with the longer trips you’d accelerate most of the way there cutting the time down constantly. Acceleration for Two months would get you to Jupiter in the two more months it would take to slow back down!

It’s fun to think about!

mell says

USA! USA!

Not sure you heard but China's space shit [sic] blew up at launch a few days ago.

Tenpoundbass says

As humans will never be able to withstand years in space and return in good health.

The man speaks the truth! Not even on a local space station. Little known (everyone yacks about bone loss and cardiovascular) but these astronuts come back going blind.

I'm all for mining though.

just_dregalicious says

mell says

USA! USA!

Not sure you heard but China's space shit [sic] blew up at launch a few days ago.

It was made in China, so of course it didn't last.