
The Story of Apollo 17 and Why We Never Went Back to the Moon - dnetesn
http://io9.com/the-real-story-of-apollo-17-and-why-we-never-went-ba-1670503448?curator=MediaREDEF
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lukifer
The blunt reality is that us meatbags are utterly ill-suited in every way to
exist anywhere other than Earth (or someplace very Earth-like), and it
requires a staggering amount of resources to climb uphill against that fact.
I'm happy that we went to the moon (a truly mind-blowing achievement), and I
hope that a human someday walks on Mars; but in an age of robotics, manned
space travel is no longer the optimal way to explore or conduct research. Even
its utility as a PR stunt has rapidly diminishing returns.

The good news is that the ever-growing sophistication of mechanical devices
gives our species incredible "virtual fingers" to probe and interact with the
cosmos, whether for research, or industry (such as asteroid mining, and
perhaps someday, long-term terraforming).

And of course, I hold out hope that our cyborg/android/AI great-grandchildren
will someday roam the stars in a way that we primates can only dream of.

~~~
magicalist
There is no foundation for this argument to stand on.

Besides the fact that sending humans vs sending robots isn't a zero sum game,
we're also sending robots out with decreasing frequency as well. "We should be
happy to just send robots" would be great if we were actually sending robots.
Here's hoping China and India pick up the mantle when Oppy and Curiosity
finally shut down, I guess.

The reality is also that we don't learn much science with practical benefits
for the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars we spend on these probes.
Of course, we also get wildly poor returns on investment for the hundreds of
billions to trillions of dollars we spend (in the US) on defense and health
care. What we've decided is that it's worth it to spend a small amount of our
money on the exploration of our universe, that discovery can be its own reward
(and if there's a small chance in practical payoffs down the line, even
better). We don't need to see what the surface of Pluto looks like, but I'm
pretty excited to find out about it. Dismiss that as PR, but apply it equally.

This argument functions similarly to the one demanding we solve all the
problems on earth before we start spending money on space. It assumes a way of
allocating funds that doesn't match reality and demands unrealistic
requirements not imposed on the favored approach.

~~~
lukifer
> Besides the fact that sending humans vs sending robots isn't a zero sum game

This is a good point. I'm certainly not advocating against humans going to
space; I just think sending robots is a vastly better long-term ROI. And
whether it's a hundred years away or ten thousand, someday a form of
intelligent life will exist on this planet that is much better equipped (if
not actively designed) to seek its destiny in the stars.

~~~
waps
Human bodies :

* require a constant supply of oxygen. Which is available effectively nowhere except deep inside gravity wells.

* require a constant supply of water. Which is available effectively nowhere. H may be everywhere, but O is nowhere convenient.

* require G-forces to be between 0.8 and 1.2 for long term survival. Can tolerate very brief exposure up to about 4G. This means the vast majority of planets are effectively uninhabitable just for that reason. And harshly limits the maneuvers possible to get there.

* require a sun-like source of radiative energy with a certain minimum intensity (one of the reasons people can't survive on Mars without additional UV exposure)

* require the presence, in small quantities, of half the elements with an atomic number up to 26, and several found further on. H, C, N, O, Na, Mg, Al, S, Cl, K, Ca, Fe, and I. Some of these are not very common, and they may be very hard to find. Not finding them first means it becomes impossible to have kids, increased occurrence of things like cancer, and a few years later it becomes lethal.

* require gravity. Which is massively inconvenient for operating ... well, anything really

* require radiation shielding against solar radiation for long term survival that requires about a hundred kilometers of atmosphere or several inches of metal (if you're to survive long term, for short excursions less isolation can be acceptable, also in Low Earth Orbit (like ISS) you're still partially shielded by the earth)

* require radiation shielding for charged particles that is provided by the earth's magnetic field, but requires metal barriers in outside of those fields

* require the sun's plasma barrier around the solar system to weaken interstellar background radiation to the point that the earth's atmosphere/reasonable thickness metal can actually stop it.

* require to be inside the galaxy, again to weaken certain types of radiation

* require a minimum distance to any supernova explosion of around 50 light years to survive (or yet more shielding)

* require to be in groups of at least 50 for long term survival (or we won't have enough gene variation and die off over time), even though short excursions can use a limited number of people. This is the low end of the estimates.

* require to be in groups of 2-3 people at least even for short term excursions or there will be severe psychological consequences

* require the presence of large masses of bacteria to fulfill certain bodily functions the human body can't actually do itself (best - but not only - example being digestion)

* require the presence of bacteria outside of the body to create compounds that we can't make ourselves. Some of these cannot be stored for any length of time, you need to take bacterial colonies or, better yet, plants + bacterial colonies with you and let them grow.

This isn't a complete list by any means. Human bodies will never go very far
from Earth.

~~~
rdl
In the cosmic sense, Mars isn't terribly far, at least, or far off on most of
these, given potential technological progress over the next few hundred years.
I'm pretty confident humans will briefly visit Mars before 2040, and will
probably maintain a continual presence, even as meat.

~~~
lukifer
My understanding is that Mars has a dead core and no magnetic field, meaning
severe problems with radiation, and even if we melted icecaps and thickened
the atmosphere, Mars' lower gravity and lack of a magnetic barrier to solar
wind would lead to gas particles escaping to space, and the atmosphere
eventually thinning again.

~~~
arrrg
I think that eventually would be measured in centuries or more. If we are able
to solve the engineering challenge of terraforming Mars in the first place
this kind of continual housekeeping won’t be an issue.

~~~
rdl
I wasn't thinking anything this ambitious. We can keep people alive in the
crushing depths of the oceans for weeks/months/years at a time; the real
limits there seem to be economic. We could do the same thing for tens or
hundreds of people on Mars if we really wanted to. Living indoors/underground
most of the time, dependent upon certain things being supplied from Earth (but
otherwise some kind of closed cycle or local production for anything bulky),
etc.

------
sillysaurus3
I've been trying to get this article some attention on HN, but it's fallen
flat the three or so times I've submitted it. "The case for nuclear propulsion
for spacecraft (2003)":
[http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03h.html](http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclearspace-03h.html)

The article's points are (a) there were some realistic strides towards long-
term sustainable space exploration before the Apollo project, (b) the Apollo
project was directly responsible for canceling funding towards these long-term
projects, and (c) the Apollo project was nothing more than a machine to
convert a huge quantity of cash into a one-time use spacecar to stick a pole
in the moon.

It was particularly surprising to realize that there are, in fact, feasible
ideas for real space exploration. Humanity just has to remember and decide to
pursue it.

~~~
jes
With respect, the comment that "the Apollo project was nothing more than a
machine to convert a huge quantity of cash into a one-time use space-car to
stick a pole in the moon" seems to drop an incredible amount of context.

I think the Apollo project (and Mercury, and Gemini, the programs which
preceded Apollo) resulted in a massive amount of learning, technology
development, progress in manufacturing know-how, etc.

Your thoughts?

~~~
sillysaurus3
How do you feel about the idea that microcontrollers would have been invented
anyway, even if Silicon Valley hadn't established the industry? It's that kind
of situation. The learning, technology development, and manufacturing know-how
may still have came. We'll never know for certain, and I'm not trying to imply
that the Apollo project did nothing for any of those things, but it was
largely a political decision to cancel these long-term space exploration
projects in favor of the US being able to thumb their nose at the Russians for
a bit. (As opposed to those projects being canceled for scientific reasons
like feasibility.)

------
avmich
I don't believe we have a solution to human-vs.-machine question, which is
better to go to space. On human side, many times both opponents and proponents
of space robotics pointer out that for big exploration programs humans become
more economical - as you still can't reproduce human abilities in space with
robotics while spending the same resources, if you have big enough goals.

Humans have other advantages too. Majority of people in modern NASA workforce
say that they become interested in space when watching human space programs.
So far no robotic achievements have psychological impact equal to humans in
space. Next, there is eternal "explorational" argument - you don't really
"get" space into your domain until you're actually maintain physical presence
in it. Unless you at least fly on LEO, you aren't in space. Until you fly to
the Moon, you don't "use" it. Etc.

Next, while robotics is advancing with leaps and bounds, human spaceflight
doesn't stand still. In 1990-s Dan Goldin, NASA administrator, ordered an
evaluation of some options of going back to the Moon. The cheapest was using
existing rockets - less than 30 tonns on LEO per launch - and the program was
for less than a billion dollars. Note that a bunch of technologies used today
in manned spaceflight are vastly superior to those used during Project Apollo.

Getting to orbit becomes cheaper and safer - SpaceX is another evidence to
that, but it's not at the end of technical possibilities. When you get
spaceflight cheap enough, there is no stop for curious individuals to go to
the Moon in person. Same for Mars - at least.

What technologies will be employed for traveling in space - that's another
matter. With cheaper and cheaper energy it will progressively make sense to
make more and more safe - even if heavier - human spacecrafts. The more
infrastructure in space we have - be it LEO stations, fuel depots on orbit,
Moon-based fuel production, Mars navigational network etc - the easier it will
be to launch both robots and humans. It's hard for me to see why we won't want
to go.

------
lifeisstillgood
Why, in good old Keynesian terms, did spending 4 % of the total budget on what
could be described as a New Deal for engineering and scientists, was there
supposedly so little ROI? That seems to be the argument from this article - we
did not go back because it was too expensive. But if it brought more benefits
than it cost, surely the expense is worth it?

I would have assumed economists would be all over NASA's accounts and the
impact on the national debt?

It just seems a great natural experiment for spending as an economic
influencer.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
The telos of America is not ROI. The conquest of the continent was not really
about monetary returns. You should think of space as a new manifest destiny.

~~~
Spooky23
That's not really true. Many people and our nation became very rich by
conquering the continent. What's the upside on the moon?

------
rootbear
Lots of interesting discussion here about space exploration, but I'd like to
add a personal note. I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, during the 60s, NASA's
glory years. Huntsville is home to Marshall Space Flight Center, where my
father, an electrical engineer, worked as a contractor, with Chrysler. He
worked on parts of the Saturn V and, I think, Gemini. When the Apollo program
shut down and NASA had to retrench, he was laid off at about age 50, along
with many other scientists and engineers. Huntsville imploded. Some of the
unemployed started high-tech companies, some found jobs elsewhere, many left
aerospace entirely. Chrysler moved some operations there, but nothing was
available for my father. Fortunately, he heard through a friend of a job at
Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. He got the job and we moved, taking
a loss on the house we'd owned for twelve years. He spent the last 17 years of
his career at Goddard. Aside from the bigger issues of Humanity's Destiny in
Space, the end of Apollo had significant human costs and changed many lives,
including mine. I work at Goddard now and have spent over twenty years of my
career here. That probably wouldn't have happened had we not moved to Maryland
in 1971, when Apollo ended.

------
vorg
Some media company (Google, Alibaba?) might fill up the sunny side of the Moon
with a grid of photovoltaic cells 1 kilometer apart, then charge money to
flash advertisements back at the Earth. They'd make a killing during solar
eclipses, it would be like the Superbowl!

~~~
logfromblammo
You would also need batteries that can charge for two weeks of lunar day, and
then last for the two weeks of lunar night. And you would need at least 15
million of them at that scale.

If you could squash each unit down to just 1 kg and reduce your cost to only
$1M per kg to the lunar surface, the whole project would only cost $15
trillion, which is only about a sixth of the entire global economy.

It would probably be cheaper to erect a giant space-screen that selectively
redirects incident sunlight through optical fibers in a nearer Earth orbit.
Rather than turn the Moon into a billboard, build an orbiting billboard that
is the same apparent size as the Moon. Or bigger. Really spoil the view.

~~~
vorg
Batteries on the moon could be used incrementally, sending only 100 up at
first in a 10 x 10 grid, and flashing back crude pictures or ideograms, even
basic movies of McDonalds burgers, so there's free cash flow early on. An
orbiting billboard, however, needs to be built all at once before it's useful,
so it's a bigger upfront investment. Moon batteries can also be placed
strategically to blend in with the topographical features already there, so
instead of a Man in the Moon, we see a Man in the Moon drinking a can of Coke.

------
ars
We didn't go back to the moon for the simple reason that there is nothing
there for a human.

Mars is the same way, and there is little reason to send a human there -
there's just nothing there for a human to do.

------
arikrak
It was a great achievement to send humans to the moon, but I don't really see
the point in going again. Or in sending humans to Mars. It won't be a place
where people can live. No matter what happens to Earth, there will still be
areas on it (or in it) that are more habitable to life than anywhere else in
the solar system (and beyond). We could spend more time exploring the inside
of Earth (and maybe creating small colonies there) than on the moon or mars.

~~~
visakanv
We should go to Mars for the same reason we should climb Everest- because it
is there. Neil Tyson has spoken very eloquently about this. Having something
to strive for inspires people. It inspires children to become scientists,
engineers, people who do something that nobody has ever done before, go
somewhere that nobody has gone before. And that has untold, unimaginable
benefits for all of humankind:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbOjZWjTLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbOjZWjTLU)

~~~
avmich
If both robotics and human spaceflight will become cheap enough, even the fact
that, say, robotic flights are fixed times cheaper won't matter. You don't
always refuse to get a cup of coffee just because it's several times more
expensive than some alternatives. The absolute difference is small enough for
you to just ignore the fixed relative difference.

------
LunaSea
Sadly, the planets around us are pretty boring. There's no point really to go
there.

------
omot
It's easy we never got to the moon in the first place.

