
China talking with European Space Agency about moon outpost - jgrahamc
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347ff7/china-talking-european-space-agency-about-moon-outpost
======
lorenzhs
ESA's director general Jan Wörner spoke about ESA's plan for a lunar village
at 33c3:
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8406-the_moon_and_european_space...](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8406-the_moon_and_european_space_exploration)
"Refocusing on the moon as a platform for future deep space missoins". It's a
great watch, but doesn't contain many details.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _ESA 's director (...) at 33c3_

I'm impressed by that fact alone. Speaks well about ESA.

~~~
lorenzhs
Yes, absolutely. There was another talk by someone at ESA on the feasibility
of a moon elevator as well:
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8407-an_elevator_to_the_moon_and...](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8407-an_elevator_to_the_moon_and_back)
, which is also quite cool. The gist is that while we don't have the materials
to build a space elevator from Earth, today's materials are sufficiently
strong to construct a moon elevator (from the moon into space). This would
reduce the ∆v required for moon missions significantly (by around 2.8km/s
iirc). Getting the materials to the moon and constructing the elevator are a
different story, though :)

~~~
Nomentatus
Something I remember proposing more than a decade ago. But it's actually
better to use it as an anchor for a station at the L1 earth-moon point and
one-shot payloads there by ecannon from the lunar surface, since at the right
angle such payloads actually climb up the gravitational saddle to the
saddlepoint where the station is and come to rest there.

------
rekshaw
Reminded me of The Three Body Problem trilogy (currently on Book 3). Highly
recommend it for any fans of Science Fiction as the author is incredibly
detailed and comprehensive in the social implications of space/ET life.

~~~
lmm
I don't understand why _Three Body Problem_ gets so much positive attention? I
read it and found it incredibly boring. Most of the pages were spent on the
historical stuff, which the characters just weren't interesting enough to
sustain; when it finally gets around to the sci-fi part the MMO conceit is
dragged out endlessly and fundamentally makes no sense on any level, and then
the magic unfolded proton at the end was just a deus ex machina with no
connection to anything.

For the calibration comparison, I did enjoy _The Player of Games_ ; I felt the
setup was a little clunky (the bit about provability of recordings by Minds
should have been set up beforehand to give the reader a fair understanding of
the world) and I struggled a little because I had little sympathy for the
protagonist (and there's only really one) for a long time. But on the whole I
did enjoy it; the part about wanting to know that victory is possible is a
good crystalization of a genuine insight into human nature, and the vision of
devoting one's life to something that completely catches the imagination. And
the conclusions works very well as a "continuation of politics by other means"
thing.

~~~
stevendhansen
Different strokes I guess. I really enjoyed the Three Body Problem trilogy due
its expansiveness both in time and in space, and its focus on ideas rather
than (solely on) characters.

Then again one of my favorites hard SF authors is Greg Egan, and I've heard
many times that people find his work dull (which blows my mind - Egan writes
some of the most thought provoking, interesting SF by FAR).

~~~
lmm
> Different strokes I guess. I really enjoyed the Three Body Problem trilogy
> due its expansiveness both in time and in space, and its focus on ideas
> rather than (solely on) characters.

I don't know what ideas or expansiveness you're talking about?

> Then again one of my favorites hard SF authors is Greg Egan, and I've heard
> many times that people find his work dull (which blows my mind - Egan writes
> some of the most thought provoking, interesting SF by FAR).

I found the metaphysical stuff in e.g. Permutation City slow and boring - it
felt like he'd had a clever idea but wasn't pushing it as hard or as fast as
it could go. Had the same experience with a couple of others of his (Distress
and Schild's Ladder are the ones I read). To the point where I stopped reading
him for a while.

I found the Orthogonal trilogy a _lot_ better; the physics of that is a lot
more interesting than metaphysics. Though as a confounding factor I do think
the characters in that were much better - still broad-strokes archetypes, but
not total nonentities like in his earlier work.

~~~
stevendhansen
Expansiveness in that Three Body Triology takes place over a large period of
time (billions of years), and the fact that it takes place over such a large
space (Earth, Trisolaris, outer planets, etc). The ideas were similarly
expansive, especially the dark forest philosophy and its implications. That
being said, there were several places where I found myself bored and waiting
for something to happen. Even so it was an enjoyable read overall.

Permutation City is one of my favorites. When you say "slow and boring", I say
"subtle build" to the final realization of what Paul has done and how his
realization has proved the "dust" theory.

Really like Schild's Ladder too, and Distress is pretty good but not my
favorite.

I agree with you on Orthogonal for the most part. Although I was very
disappointed in the ending - it seemed too abrupt and predictable given the
rest of the story.

~~~
lmm
> Expansiveness in that Three Body Triology takes place over a large period of
> time (billions of years), and the fact that it takes place over such a large
> space (Earth, Trisolaris, outer planets, etc).

I'm talking solely about the first one, I only read that (and probably
wouldn't have bothered finishing it if it hadn't been for the Hugo). There's
no large time range that I remember, very little happening anywhere other than
Earth, and nothing of philosophical interest that I saw.

> When you say "slow and boring", I say "subtle build" to the final
> realization of what Paul has done and how his realization has proved the
> "dust" theory.

I found it just took too long to get around to a "reveal" that was already
obvious. And the conclusion of part 2 doesn't really engage properly with the
dust theory; if anything the humans' inability to modify the machines the
ants' universe is running on undermines it, because under their physics that
action would make perfect sense. The ants' reality "wins" by pure authorial
fiat; you could - and should, it would be interesting - make an argument for
why it should based on kolgomorov complexity or some such, but Egan neglects
to.

~~~
electrograv
The Three Body Trilogy is actually one of my all time favorite scifi book
series (and I read a lot of scifi). A lot of interesting ideas are developed
through the story arc. Perhaps unfortunately, the first book is more setting
the stage for the others, which makes it a difficult read for some. The Three
Body Trilogy IMO would probably have better merged into a single book, but
then doing so would make it seem an impossibly long read for some perhaps. I
agree it is a bit slow at times, but worth it.

If you want a denser read (less setup, etc.) that also has a lot of really
thought-provoking concepts, I highly recommend also "Blindsight" by Peter
Watts. Blindsight is probably my all time favorite scifi novel, actually.

~~~
lmm
I'd a big fan of Blindsight. That said I'm not averse to long books and I love
worldbuilding (e.g. I really liked _Anathem_ , and _The January Dancer_ ).
Though I think I do also like to have a conventional plot to hold onto - a
quest that our viewpoint characters are trying to accomplish - maybe that's
what was missing from Three Body Problem for me.

------
ptero
This to me is a good news as it help keep the topic alive, but I doubt that
this effort will be very successive (I wish it the best). It will likely get
too expensive quickly. Both participants are bureaucratic (afraid of failures)
and suspicious of each other (secrecy, national pride) which will also ramp up
costs. We probably can set up a base now at a huge cost to set up and
operation, but it will likely fizzle soon to next budget crisis.

I think to bootstrap a useful permanent base on the moon or Mars (that can
grow, provides safe and efficient transport) we need to accept _significantly_
higher risk to life, say 20%, at the initial setup / prototyping period to
allow rapid development and testing of new technologies for all stages of the
process (flight, space stations, energy, mining, etc.). I think enough
qualified individuals will gladly accept this for a chance to fly, but
regulators will likely kill this if they consider it not safe enough.

Private companies are more likely to achieve this, especially if they are not
hamstrung by regulations. My 2c.

~~~
mikeash
20% is _way_ too high. Even ignoring the (important!) human factors, that sort
of failure rate would raise the expense tremendously all on its own. We are
finally seeing a glimpse of true reusable rockets, which are the only way to
do things in space at anything like a reasonable cost. A 20% failure rate
means your reusable rockets can't be reused very much.

Along similar lines, even if you ignore the fear and grief factor, a 20%
fatality rate means you'll never create experienced astronauts.

I also really doubt that putting the risk that high would be particularly
useful. Even the worst non-man-rated rockets out there have a failure rate of
something like 10%, and those failures generally wouldn't kill the astronauts
if their spacecraft had a launch escape system. The Space Shuttle's fatality
rate was about 2%, and that was only because it was a vastly over-complex,
fragile machine with no realistic abort modes in many phases of flight. No
other spacecraft made or planned could fail in the ways the Shuttle did.

A government effort probably will be expensive, but only because they're slow
to adapt. It will probably be quite some time before we see a(nother) reusable
government rocket.

However, a private effort won't go anywhere, because there's no business case
for a moon base, nor even a "dream big" case for an Elon Musk type figure.
(Mars is a better target by nearly every measure for the second one.)

The best bet IMO would be a public-private partnership, with governments
providing the basic goals and funding, and private companies providing the
technology and services.

~~~
ptero
Space Shuttle was not a major breakthrough -- we were in space and had orbital
stations for a long time by then. It was supposed to be a cheaper, more
convenient way to do things that we already did.

Soviet space program, Apollo program are better examples and both had ~10-20%
fatality rates, at least during the initial phases (for example, Apollo 11
(successful moon landing) was 6th Apollo mission; one out of those 6 (Apollo
1) was fatal).

Ancient seafarers, voyagers, explorers faced more dangers and had higher
fatalities than today's office clerks. If we are to keep making new voyages we
should accept that there is danger involved. If we are spending $X and could
make one step with success probability .9999 or 1000 steps with success
probability .8 we should seriously consider both options, not let bureaucrats
reject the riskier one out of hand. My 2c.

~~~
mikeash
Apollo 1 was a ground test that was retroactively given a mission name to
honor the dead. If you want to count it toward the fatality rate then the
denominator needs to include all the other ground tests they did, not just the
flights. A more complete view would also include Mercury and Gemini.

The Soviets lost a few people in flight during the early days, but the last
one was in 1971. There's no reason to think we should have a similar fatality
rate in 2017, with modern materials, processes, and control systems.

I agree in theory that _if_ a 20% fatality rate were somehow required, it
would be acceptable for things like this. My argument is not that it's
unacceptable, but that it's so high as to be a hindrance rather than a help,
and that it's _far_ beyond what's necessary even in a "damn the torpedoes,
full speed ahead" type of program.

We don't need airliner-level "one in a billion" safety, but something around
1% seems highly reasonable.

~~~
Nomentatus
Of the Gemini astronauts, I believe fully one-sixth died in training
accidents, mostly flight accidents.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_non-
fatal_training...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceflight_non-
fatal_training_accidents)

------
hownottowrite
"The discussions were confirmed by the ESA’s Pal Hvistendahl, speaking to
Bloomberg on Wednesday"

Pal Hvistendahl wasn't talking to Bloomberg. The original article is from the
AP (which is noted in the byline on Bloomberg too).

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347ff7/china-
talking-european-space-agency-about-moon-outpost)

------
jlebrech
Seriously, let's just send 100s of robots.

You can send: digging, sintering, dusting, pushing, lifting robots, and you
can build any structure.

Just keep sending new robots till we can send humans, and the humans can
repair what's there.

~~~
Houshalter
I really believe (mostly) self replicating robots are necessary for any
serious space colonization. Starting with just humans is way more effort than
it's worth. Imagine just sending a few rockets to the moon. Waiting a few
years, and then humans arrive with a base and infrastructure already set up
for them.

Self replicating robots don't necessarily need to be super high tech. A well
stocked machine shop plus a simple robot operator could manufacture 99% of
it's own equipment. I once saw an interesting paper proposing a series of
small robots on tracks that could produce more tracks and more robots.

Even if this process is very slow, it's exponential. Soon you have 10x as many
robots as you started with. Then 100x, and then 1000x...

~~~
mindcrime
_I really believe (mostly) self replicating robots are necessary for any
serious space colonization. Starting with just humans is way more effort than
it 's worth. Imagine just sending a few rockets to the moon. Waiting a few
years, and then humans arrive with a base and infrastructure already set up
for them._

Last week's episode of Doctor Who had an interesting take on that scenario:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_%28Doctor_Who%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smile_%28Doctor_Who%29)

------
thearn4
Count me among the "moon first, then mars" crowd.

~~~
arunix
I agree. Both the Moon and Mars have a huge amount of sub-surface potential
living space.

I think a long term colony on either of these worlds would be much safer below
the surface where it would be shielded from cosmic rays etc.

If we can learn to build 'ant colony' style habitats on the Moon, we ought to
be able to do the same on Mars once the cost of travel becomes lower.

~~~
vkou
There's another planet with a huge amount of unused sub-surface, and on-
surface living space - the Earth. We don't even need to leave the gravity
well!

If you're concerned about civilization-ending climate/nuclear disasters,
consider that even in that event, parts of the Earth will still be more
hospitable for human life then the Moon or Mars.

------
jmadsen
I thought the whole idea of "moon bases" were put to rest a long time ago? Not
any categories I'm aware of where they are the best option, from mining,
forward base to Mars, habitability, etc

~~~
mwill
Rule of cool? Its probably the best bang for the buck to get the general
populace interested in space travel again.

A Chinese / European moon base would probably breed a whole new generation of
space nerds.

------
sevensor
NASA was talking about this in the '70s and '80s. Didn't go anywhere, but left
behind a pretty cool gallery of concept art:

[https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/exploration/luna...](https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/exploration/lunarexploration/ndxpage1.html)

------
hacker_9
I wonder, if the moon becomes a habitable location in my lifetime, will all
those people who bought 'an acre of the moon' have their contract upheld? [0]

[0] [https://www.moonestates.com](https://www.moonestates.com)

~~~
JorgeGT
"Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to
national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation,
or by any other means"

Outer Space Treaty, Article II:
[http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/intr...](http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html)

~~~
stult
It's actually unclear whether this prohibits private property, though it
probably would because property can't exist without enforcement of property
rights by a sovereign government. Which raises something of a difficult
question for asteroid mining ventures. Personally I think we will see the OST
revised or rescinded once these hypothetical situations start actually
happening. We need more clarity on property rights for commercial exploitation
of space resources to become viable. No one is going to invest $100bn to
capture and mine an asteroid only to find out that they technically do not
have exclusive rights to the asteroid and anyone who reach near earth orbit
can legally mine it too. In any case, those BS certificates for moon acerage
are definitely not enforceable, for about fifty different legal reasons. The
most obvious of which is you can't sell what you don't own.

~~~
icebraining
Not that I'm advocating it, but an alternative to rescinding the OST would be
to set up an international organization responsible for allocating "space
property", possibly under the umbrella of the WTO.

~~~
SCHiM
Sadly I'm quite sure that these issues are always solved by force. I simply
cannot imagine that countries with the means to get to <valuable space
resource> will abide by the decisions of a foreign organisation which has just
given said resource to your frenemy.

------
remotehack
The US should be in on, or leading, this.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
If any part of the mission of this proposed station involves monitoring the
Earth for climate change data, and it certainly will, then the US will not be
part of it. I think if voters wanted the US to lead in space and science then
they shouldn't have voted for someone who dismisses basic science.

China will absolutely lead on this now that we've put in an anti-science
government. Expect them to lead on other things that were traditionally our
domain too.

~~~
Arizhel
Why is this down-voted? It's 100% correct. The US will not be part of anything
that involves climate science at this time.

We should be looking to China to lead the world in many things in the coming
years. The US has shot itself in the foot, and continues to shoot itself in
the foot.

~~~
T-A
Just guessing: maybe the down-voter thought it was an attempt to make an off-
topic political point? I wouldn't entirely disagree - I can't imagine why you
would want to go all the way to the Moon and set up a manned base there in
order to observe Earth - but a reasoned response making that point explicitly
would certainly have been better.

There is plenty of peculiar-looking down-voting on HN. I am seriously
beginning to wonder if that down arrow serves any useful purpose.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>I can't imagine why you would want to go all the way to the Moon and set up a
manned base there in order to observe Earth

Why wouldn't you? You're all the way there and pointing a sensor at the Earth
isn't a big deal. You know you can do more than one thing at a time, right?

Climate science is probably one of our bigger planetary issues and perhaps the
biggest issue facing humanity right now. You know Earth is a planet right?
That's part of planetary science, that's why you explore space in the first
place. It doesn't get an exception for purely political reasons. Studying the
Earth is no different than studying Mars or Jupiter.

Its incredible the hoops people will jump through to justify Trump's absurd
climate conspiracy theories and asinine policies in regards to science.

~~~
T-A
> Why wouldn't you?

For the same reason that these aren't on the Moon:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Earth_observation_sate...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Earth_observation_satellites)

------
jlebrech
elon musk just needs to send his boring machines to build an underground base,
hey presto.

~~~
adrianratnapala
But if the machines did something that cool, then would they be boring any
more?

~~~
andai
For all you downvoting plebs: op is jokingly referring to The Boring Company.

~~~
jlebrech
jokes earn downvotes in this place :(

~~~
2UQDQ5DT
Only boring jokes.

------
johnnydoe9
I can hear Clint Mansell music already, "I'm Sam Bell Too"

------
campuscodi
So you've shared this 3-paragraph reworded TechCrunch article instead of
linking to the original Bloomberg report?

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/china-
tal...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-26/china-talking-with-
european-space-agency-about-moon-outpost)

~~~
paradite
So you've linked this copypaste Bloomberg report instead of the original AP
story? It is literally written there on Bloomberg news page:

> THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (MATTHEW BROWN)

[http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347ff7/china-
talking-european-space-agency-about-moon-outpost)

[https://www.apnews.com/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347ff7/Chin...](https://www.apnews.com/c7d78ca284eb4347821fe2825e347ff7/China-
talking-with-European-Space-Agency-about-moon-outpost)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link from
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/chinese-and-european-
space...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/chinese-and-european-space-
agencies-in-talks-to-build-a-moon-base).

------
sehugg
Methinks there's a little bit of political symbolism, too.

------
smdz
I've always wondered why the US never went back to the moon. Or never set up a
moon base for space exploration and experimentation.

Even when countries like China and India are making attempts to mine the moon
for Helium - why don't we hear such stories from the US? If it makes sense for
China and India, it probably does make sense for US too. Or do the US elites
know something much more fundamental and powerful that we might never hear of
until the next world-war?

I don't like the controversy theories, especially about aliens, but I don't
like the arguments against the controversy theories either. I don't know if
aliens exist and even if they existed and visited us few decades back, I
believe they would disregard us as a sub-Type 0 civilization (like Michio Kaku
categorizes). They would have found us similar to primitives - studied us and
left.

~~~
krapp
>I've always wondered why the US never went back to the moon. Or never set up
a moon base for space exploration and experimentation.

The US sent half a dozen crewed missions to the moon, and made numerous
unmanned missions.

There's no dark secret - space travel is complex and expensive, travel to the
moon _vastly_ more so than simply to orbit, and money is governed by politics.
When the US had the prestige of possibly beating the Soviets to the moon ,
there was the political and popular will to do so. But eventually, the trick
simply got old, and no longer seemed worth the expense.

Now take that, and add the exponential long term cost of a habitat and mining
operation on the moon with 1970's / 1980's dollars and tech. I remember there
being numerous _plans_ for a moonbase at the time, it was _discussed_ by NASA
often, but the thing is, no one could figure out how to actually make it work
reasonably cheaply without seeming like a lavish and pointless boondoggle to
Congress.

~~~
Fifer82
I find it odd that in the 60s it was deemed affordable, but during the 2
decades of boomer super cycle, the female migration to the workforce, and
spending money now which our grandchildrens grandchildren will be repaying...
we could ill afford it.

~~~
krapp
It wasn't considered to be worth the cost, that's not entirely the same as not
being affordable. The US wanted to focus on the Shuttle, satellite
reconnaissance and Star Wars.

~~~
ghaff
and ISS and unmanned probes.

~~~
krapp
The ISS is a good example of this phenomenon - it was going to be "Space
Station Freedom[0]" before it became the "International Space Station" because
budget cuts made the original plans no longer feasible.

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_Freedom)

~~~
TorKlingberg
Also the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, which presented both an
unexpected opportunity and a risk. Opportunity in that Russia was no longer
the enemy and could be a partner with experience running space stations. Risk
in that Russia was not going to spend as much on space by themselves as the
Soviet Union did, and their rocket engineers might have been tempted to go
work for Iran, North Korea or other countries with nuclear ambitions. By doing
the ISS together with Russia, those engineers were kept employed.

