
A new Moon race has begun - edward
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/05/09/another-step-towards-returning-people-to-earths-satellite
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kevin_thibedeau
The projected dates of 2023 and 2024 for a gateway station and landing are
completely unachievable. I assume it's tied into boosterism for the reelection
campaign: "Look at what we're going to do in our second term." It's sad that
nobody in the media is calling them out on this.

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bryanlarsen
Landing on the moon in 2024 is far less ridiculous a statement than Kennedy's
moon announcement in 1961 was. We can do it, we just don't want to badly
enough.

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0x8BADF00D
Manned spaceflight and stations are unnecessary in the near term. Autonomous
drones and machines can bootstrap colonization. A mining refinery can be
bootstrapped easily, all remotely. Then asteroid mining droids will drop their
payloads there for refinement and processing.

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ceejayoz
How near is your "near term" here?

We still pay hefty amounts of money to oil rig workers and underwater welders,
even here on Earth. Robot telepresence has a long way to go before we can
build an entire refinery in zero-G.

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derekp7
Agreed. The benchmark I use is I'll believe that robotic missions make human
missions irrelevant, when the day comes that I can get a roomba that works
across multiple floors, climbing stairs (and cleaning stairs), empties itself
in the trash can, and avoids pet messes instead of dragging poop all over the
floor.

Or a laundry system that grabs the basket of dirty laundry (or better yet,
picks the close off the floor), washes, then transfers to the dryer, then
irons and hangs up the clothes.

If machines can do all that effectively, then they can probably explore other
planetary bodies as good as people.

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prewett
If you were going to make a 100% robotic factory/refinery/etc. you would
design it for robots. The problem with the Roomba is that houses are designed
for people, not robots. A robotic factory could avoid a lot of problems by not
needing to design for people.

While I disagree with your benchmark, I don't think we're going to be putting
robotic factories in space in 3-4 years. Have we even built a 100% robotic
factory on earth yet? Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous
robot for zero-g yet (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

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avmich
> Plus, I don't think that anyone has built an autonomous robot for zero-g yet
> (I'm not counting satellites and Canada-arm).

[https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15981250/japan-space-
came...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/17/15981250/japan-space-camera-drone-
iss-int-ball)

"Japan’s space agency has for the first time released photos and videos taken
on the International Space Station by its resident robot drone..."

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blegit
When ever there is talk of mining The Moon, I think of the Moon mining scene
in the movie Time Machine and it makes me mad.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs6eKmTCDY&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSs6eKmTCDY&feature=youtu.be&t=62)

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neonate
[https://archive.md/ElkSG](https://archive.md/ElkSG)

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RachelF
Thanks for that. The Economist's paywall seems to be on every article now.

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blackrock
Who is racing? And why?

This just sounds like a lot of waste of money, when they won’t even bother to
help people pay their rents.

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dwaltrip
Technology developed for space will benefit those living on Earth. This
happened with the Apollo program and will continue with other programs.

We can and should do multiple things at once.

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aug_aug
Yes, it's called Space Force and it's on Netflix. Can't wait.

