
Can we colonize the moon? - cpeterso
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0722/Can-we-colonize-the-moon
======
thwarted
There's a great speculative scifi book called "Welcome to Moonbase" (Ben Bova,
1987)[0] that is written as an employee manual for people relocating to an
established moon colony. There are sections on the history of the moonbase,
the economy, the social aspects, living and working on the moon. It's a
fantastic paleofuture read, and is one of the books that kindled my love for
sci-fi and space exploration as a kid. It's fiction, but does make it seem
like living on the moon is something achievable within our lifetimes and could
serve to answer the question "can we colonize the moon?".

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Moonbase-Ben-
Bova/dp/034532859...](http://www.amazon.com/Welcome-Moonbase-Ben-
Bova/dp/0345328590)

~~~
enra
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is also one great scifi classic Although more
later stage living on the moon and revolution.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Is-Harsh-
Mistress/dp/03128635...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Moon-Is-Harsh-
Mistress/dp/0312863551)

~~~
fho
I read that book twice. Once with the german title "Der Mond is eine herbe
Geliebte" (direct translation), then years later a friend recommended the book
"Revolte auf Luna" ("Riot on Luna"). I got half way through the book before I
realized that I was reading the exact same book. Great story nevertheless.

------
qrendel
A similar proposal from a while back was one on "Rapid Bootstrapping of Space
Industry," essentially concluding we could have a robust space industry with
an industrial output 1,000,000x that of US GDP within about four decades - for
as little as 12 metric tons landed on the moon to kickstart the process. The
proposal relied heavily on automated systems and coming advances in robotics,
but ignored other likely improvements such as atomic-scale manufacturing.
Other than perhaps sheer disbelief I'm not sure why there hasn't been more
interest in it.

[1] [http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/affordable-rapid-
bootstrap...](http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/affordable-rapid-
bootstrapping-space-industry-solar-system-civilization/)

[2] Paper - [http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09...](http://www.philipmetzger.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2014/09/Preprint_Affordable-bootstrapping-of-space-industry-
and-solar-system-civilization.pdf)

~~~
Animats
From that paper: _" A 1980 summer study at the NASA Ames Research Center
(Freitas and Gilbreath 1980) showed that self-reproducing machines are
theoretically possible."_

I remember that crowd. They wanted to have self-reproducing machines on the
moon by 2000. I asked, "how soon can you do it in New Mexico". They didn't
like that.

~~~
qrendel
The proposal in the paper is at least somewhat different: it wouldn't become
fully self-sufficient until the later stages of about a seven stage process.
The earlier stages just involve unmanned robots controlled from Earth,
beginning with around 17th century technology and moving towards autonomy with
each successive generation. I definitely see your point, but this isn't quite
the same as proposing a lunar colony of self-reproducing robots within the
next few years (besides, robotics have come a long way since then).

------
shoo
"Colonize" isn't the right word. Living on another planet doesn't make any
sense for us. Perhaps it makes sense to put a very small number of people on
the moon for purely scientific or commercial reasons - but it might make more
commercial sense to instead use robots and sidestep the hassle of maintaining
real live humans up there.

Charles Stross wrote about this a few years ago [1]:

> Whichever way you cut it, sending a single tourist to the moon is going to
> cost not less than $50,000 — and a more realistic figure, for a mature
> reusable, cheap, rocket-based lunar transport cycle is more like $1M. And
> that's before you factor in the price of bringing them back ...

> The moon is about 1.3 light seconds away. If we want to go panning the
> (metaphorical) rivers for gold, we'd do better to send teleoperator-
> controlled robots; it's close enough that we can control them directly, and
> far enough away that the cost of transporting food and creature comforts for
> human explorers is astronomical. There probably _are_ niches for human
> workers on a moon base, but only until our robot technologies are somewhat
> more mature than they are today; Mission Control would be a lot happier with
> a pair of hands and a high-def camera that doesn't talk back and doesn't
> need to go to the toilet or take naps.

[...]

> When we look at the rest of the solar system, the picture is even bleaker.
> Mars is ... well, the phrase "tourist resort" springs to mind, and is
> promptly filed in the same corner as "Gobi desert". As Bruce Sterling has
> puts it: "I'll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see
> people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times
> as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach.
> Nobody ever writes "Gobi Desert Opera" because, well, it's just kind of
> plonkingly obvious that there's no good reason to go there and live. It's
> ugly, it's inhospitable and there's no way to make it pay. Mars is just the
> same, really. We just romanticize it because it's so hard to reach." In
> other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy — our robots are all
> over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some
> shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-
> Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working
> down from there.

[1] [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2007/06/the_high...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-
static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html)

~~~
joshuapants
> Living on another planet doesn't make any sense for us

At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that
point, it will make plenty of sense.

> sending a single tourist to the moon...

All this focus on tourists seems like a strawman. Yes, there are people who
would probably want to go to the Moon or Mars for a space-cation. No, that is
not a primary reason for the existence of space programs.

Manned Moon and hypothetical manned Mars missions are not the endgame. They're
stepping stones that hopefully lead to our escape from the solar system.

~~~
zizee
> At some point in the future Earth will be uninhabitable for humans. At that
> point, it will make plenty of sense

Are you suggesting humans will damage the planet that much?

I find it difficult to imagine we can damage the Earth to such a degree that
is is easier to try and settle Mars than undo the damage on Earth.

I want manned outposts on Mars as the next person. I like to think that the
challenge of doing it is enough justification to undertake such an endeavour.

~~~
amalcon
Well, if "some point in the future" is taken liberally enough, then at "some
point in the future" the Sun will be a red giant whose radius is greater than
Earth's orbital radius. Earth is getting destroyed in about 5-6 billion years
no matter what we do.

Of course, if that's what you're planning for, the much more sensible plan is
to wait for about a billion years, and see if either A) Technology has made
this cheaper or B) We've already died for some other reason.

------
mholt
> Harvesting the vast amounts of water on the Moon – the equivalent of the
> Great Salt Lake in Utah – could make the project commercially viable.

I didn't know this. But anyway, I live by the Great Salt Lake, and it's more
like the Great Salt Puddle. Would that amount of water really sustain a
colony? I suppose the base would have the most efficient water facilities ever
invented, but still, it wouldn't last for long unless the water was recycled
forever.

(I see, later, they refer to finding such ice as 'prospecting for gold' \- I'm
optimistic about our future in space, but this water situation is tricky. Ship
it up there, maybe?)

~~~
onion2k
Water is _heavy_. A SpaceX Falcon-heavy has a maximum capacity of 21,200kg to
transfer orbit - that's not going to go very far in a colony even if it's all
water. Shipping it up there is really not an option.

Unless you have a space elevator...

~~~
nomailing
Would it make sense to harvest asteroids for water and bring it to the moon?

I am thinking about just one spaceship which could go back and forth between
some asteroid and a moon orbit. It shoots the water down to the moon, so that
it does not even have to touch-down and take-off again. How much energy would
be needed for such a mission? Probably it would be a very complex mission to
get right, but once it is established you might have water for free on the
moon.

~~~
tdy721
No!

Colonizing the Moon only makes sense if the water is there. If we're going to
harvest water from asteroids, we should colonize them instead.

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msvan
I thought the Outer Space Treaty was meant to prevent things like these.
Personally, I hope we'll leave behind all of our arbitrary notions of states
once we leave earth. It's too late to remove the dividing lines on earth, but
we still have a shot at idealism in space.

~~~
Symmetry
The Outer Space Treaty prevents people/governments from owning land outside of
Earth but it gives organizations the right to keep others out of places they
are currently using, which comes to much the same thing. Now, the Moon Treaty
does what you want but that was never ratified by anybody with a serious space
program.

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frozenport
Will a commercial enterprise see people as a needless expense that hurts their
bottom line? Why cant robots mine the moon withiut us?

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wkdown
"We are so concerned with if we could, we didn't stop to consider if we
should."

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fengwick3
Wouldn't radiation and meteorites be a huge concern?

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blumkvist
Uuuh... I thought the gravity on the moon will deform human skeletons, as they
are "made" for human gravity, so that makes living anywhere that has different
_g_ impossible. Is that not true?

~~~
leni536
Then maybe in the long run they would need to build a base that rotates
rapidly and simulates a gravity of g at the perimeter by centrifugal force.

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mrfusion
Or more simply just wear weights distributed across your clothes?

~~~
leni536
Well maybe that works against the bone structure changes. On the other hand
gravity (or the lack of it) has other effects too on the human body[1]. One
needs to use body forces to compensate the lack of gravity. Contact forces
won't help here.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effect_of_spaceflight_on_the_human_body#Fluid_redistribution)

